



Copyiightl^°. 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ESSAYS 



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in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/essaysOOcole 




VITTORIA COLON N A. 



PS -^sos 



Copyright, ipop, 

By 

Mary Eliza Gully Cole. 



JUL 8 1909 



Dedicated 

to 
MY SONS 



CONTENTS. 

PAGl 

The Social Life of the Italian Renais- 
sance 9 

Vittoria Colonna • . • . 29 

Savanarola 51 

Shelley 71 

Thought, The Parent of Originality 95 

Prayer 109 

Nineteenth Century Conception of 

Humanity . . . . 121 
An Interpretation of Emerson's 

''Sphinx'' .... 147 
Woman's Work in the Nineteenth 

Century 167 

Threnody 193 

Impractibility . • . . 205 

Questioning , « ^ , 211 



Acknowledgment is made to The 
Open Court and to The Unitarian, 
in which magazines some of these 
essays have previously appeared. 



THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE ITALIAN 
RENAISSANCE 



ESSAYS 

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE ITALIAN 
RENAISSANCE. 

A GREAT period, like a great indi- 
vidual, lives in the heart of man- 
kind, creating vivid pictures 
around which the imagination loves to 
linger. Thus the period of the Italian 
Renaissance will ever remain a shining 
mark holding us captive by its brilliant 
achievements in art and literature, its fas- 
cinating personalities, its monuments in 
stone and marble, its materialization of 
beauty and harmony in unfading colors 
on canvas and wall, its undying truths 
written in the lives and deaths of saints 
and scholars, and an ethereal atmosphere 
of fine poetic sentiment which wraps the 
name of Italy in a mantle of hazy beauty ! 
If we can pierce through this shimmering 
mantle, which dazzles our eyes, and dis- 
cern wherein the world-spirit breathed 
upon this sunny land, bringing forth some 

9 



ESSAYS 

of Its rarest flowers, to draw the human 
family upward and onward to that goal 
of perfection towards which all life tends, 
a dignity, grandeur and vitality will be 
added to our understanding and apprecia- 
tion of this great epoch, and will enable us 
to see more clearly the historic trend of 
events. We shall see that this birth or 
re-birth, with its far-reaching, brilliant 
results, was followed by death or trans- 
formation, which was only another step, 
another birth into something higher and 
better which the future will realize and 
whose birth-throes we are feeling to-day. 
For ''every art ends in a science, and all 
poetry in a philosophy, for science and 
philosophy do but translate into precise 
formula the original conceptions, which 
art and poetry render sensible by im- 
aginary figures.'' A mine of wisdom 
may be gathered by a comprehensive 
glance at any world-historic epoch, and 
for this reason is ever worthy of our care- 
ful study. 

In looking over the higher forms of so- 
cial life, during the period of the Italian 
Renaissance, the first important element 

10 



ESSAYS 

we discover is the almost entire eradica- 
tion of the idea of Caste. Social life was 
based upon the existence of an educated 
and cultured class. There were a few 
exceptions to this rule, but the whole cur- 
rent of the time was set steadily towards 
the fusion of classes. The reasons for 
this were: First, the study of antiquity; 
second, the immense power the Condot- 
tirie acquired ; third, the intensely marked 
individuality men attained; fourth, the 
widespread influence of humanism; fifth, 
a reaction from ecclesiastical rule and au- 
thority and a partial return to the free- 
dom of paganism. Each one of these in- 
fluences was a strong, clear and distinct 
movement in itself, and volumes might be 
and have been devoted to each; they are 
circles within circles. 

Personal achievement, nobility and 
valor were the watchwords of this civili- 
zation. Dante, to give this idea emphasis, 
calls ''Nobility the sister of philosophy.'' 
While Dante does not belong in any strict 
sense to the revival of learning, yet ''to 
him in a truer sense than to any other 
poet belong the double glory of immorta- 

II 



ESSAYS 

lizing in verse the centuries behind him, 
while he inaugurated the new age/' 

Naples offers an exception to the rest 
of Italy in this grand progressive move- 
ment. In 1442 the last King of the An- 
jou dynasty was conquered by Alfonso of 
Aragon, and under the Aragonese and 
Spanish Kings it was ruled by Viceroys 
until the peace of Utrecht, when it was 
annexed to the possessions of the house of 
Hapsburg. ''Her pride, vanity and strict 
isolation more than any other cause ex- 
cluded her from the spiritual movement 
of the Renaissance, and the establishment 
of the Aragonese government completed 
the work and brought about those social 
changes, obedience to French and Spanish 
ideas which only followed in the rest of 
Italy a hundred years later." The prin- 
cipal features of this disastrous transfor- 
mation were a contempt for work and a 
passion for titles. It is a curious fact 
that this indolence and this passion for 
titles still exist in Naples, and a Principi 
(or Prince) may be found loitering on 
every street corner, possessing neither a 
virtue nor a ducat. Out of this desire 

12 



ESSAYS 

for titles and love of display grew the 
fondness for the tournament. In the 
middles ages, knighthood stood for all 
that was brave and noble, and we owe 
much to it. The good that was in it has 
survived, and the obligations of the world 
to it as an ameliorating and civilizing 
agent are very great. This spirit has been 
preserved to us by the poets, Spenser and 
Ariosto. But knighthood was never of 
any great importance in Italy; first, be- 
cause of the rise of the Italian Republic; 
second, the development of the commer- 
cial spirit and the introduction of the Con- 
dottirie were all circumstances unfavor- 
able to the growth of this idea. Poggio 
and Sacchetti exhausted their irony upon 
the tournament, and left us ludicrous pic- 
tures of forlorn knights riding still more 
forlorn horses, and suggested conferring 
the honor of knighthood upon the lower 
animals and inanimate objects, and Cer- 
vantes a century and half later gave the 
final blow to knight-errantry and its false 
pretences in his inimitable Don Quixote. 
Personal skill, dexterity and fine phys- 
ical strength were cultivated to the ut- 

13 



ESSAYS 

most, and a graceful and dextrous ''tilting 
with the lance" was a fashionable pas- 
time. Caesar Borgia delighted to exhibit 
his marksmanship by shooting condemned 
criminals in the yard of the Vatican, and 
could fell an ox with one blow. Alberti 
could ''pierce the strongest armor with his 
arrows and so deftly fling a coin that it 
touched the highest point of a church or 
palace roof/' 

Wealth was considered as one of the 
elements of refined life, but only because 
it gave its possessor leisure for cosmopol- 
itan culture, which was the highest ideal 
of that period. 

The dress of a nation, as of an indi- 
vidual, gives indication of its general cul- 
ture; earnest and deliberate study entered 
into every department of life, and the Ital- 
ians pursued the idea of dress with per- 
sistent and artistic purpose. But the idea 
of dress was not confined to women ; even 
serious men considered it an important 
element in the perfection of the individ- 
ual. 

The people were as a nation vain and 
fond of display, and as birth gave little 

14 



ESSAYS 

distinction, each individual cultivated all 
personal qualities, grace and affluence of 
speech, dignified and courtly behavior, 
perfect physical strength and beauty, ar- 
tistic dressing and great learning. 

One of the marked peculiarities in re- 
gard to personal adornment was the de- 
sire to form a conventional type, disguise 
nature by every conceivable device. The 
reasons for this were the efifort made for 
perfect youthful beauty and the represen- 
tation of the mysteries, when masks and 
many other artificial conditions were al- 
lowable to produce dazzling and brilliant 
efifects. 

''Blonding'' the hair is no modern in- 
vention, for this was the much desired 
color, and silver and gold-colored thread 
was often used to decorate the heads of 
matron and maid. This passion for ar- 
tificial adornment, though ridiculed by 
poets and philosophers, and held up to 
scorn by preachers, ruled the fancy of 
woman with the true tyranny of fashion, 
excepting now and then, when appealed 
to by some inspired fanatic, like Savana- 
rola, who, possessing the key to woman's 

15 



ESSAYS 

nature, touched her conscience; then she 
humbly cast her vanities upon the funeral 
pyre erected in the pubHc square. 

Italy had all Europe for a school of 
manners, and the Renaissance produced 
her Lord Chesterfield in one named 
Giavano Delia Casa, a Florentine, who 
wrote a book, giving in a delicate and 
minute way details for good behavior, 
''prescribed with the same tact with which 
a moralist discerns the highest ethical 
truths/^ One enthusiastic writer says of 
Cosimo de Medici, ''That to see him at 
table, a perfect model of the man of old, 
was of a truth a charming sight/' 

Fine tact was cultivated as a universal 
social duty, and was not, as we are often 
led to believe from its extreme rarity, an 
especial gift of the Gods. Lorenzo the 
Magnificent, by some historians called the 
"father of literature,'' was supreme over 
his circle by his wonderful and exquisite 
tact; he entertained all men with equal 
grace; his large erudition enabled him to 
converse with the theologian of theology, 
with the scholar of letters, with the mu- 
sician of music, with the artist of art, and 

i6 



ESSAYS 

the scientist of science. His almost un- 
bounded knowledge gave him a power 
over his contemporaries which few men 
ever possessed. 

Nothing was neglected in this egoistic 
age which would add to the elegance or 
comfort of human existence, and even in 
domestic life we find a thorough system 
of training throughout the household; 
there was organization, discipline and 
education. 

While other nations were walking or 
riding horseback, the Italians were dri- 
ving over well-paved streets in fine car- 
riages, and enjoying the luxuries of costly 
carpets, fine furniture, abundance of ex- 
quisite linen, splendid tapestries, magnifi- 
cent china and dresses and ornaments of 
oriental beauty and splendor. 

Music was an important element in so- 
cial life, and under the genius and direc- 
tion of Palestrina underwent important 
modification. Before Palestrina's time 
secular tunes formed the principal theme 
of all masses and psalms. 

Language, whether written or spoken, 
was held to be an object of respect and the 

17 



ESSAYS 

crowning glory of a dignified and noble 
behavior. The Italians anticipated by 
three centuries the French Salon, for in 
the social circle all subjects were fully and 
freely discussed, and the loftiest problems 
of human life were included in their con- 
versation. ''The production of noble 
thoughts was not, as was commonly the 
case in the North, a work of solitude, but 
of society.'^ 

Dante raised the Italian language from 
comparative rudeness to the highest re- 
finement, and it was he who wrote the first 
complete treatise on any modern lan- 
guage. There were numerous dialects in 
Italy at this time. Dante's classification 
gives fourteen (14), another writer gives 
seventeen (17). One of the most vigor- 
ous and important efforts of the Renais- 
sance was made for one classical lan- 
guage. ''Language is here conceived 
apart from its uses in poetry, its highest 
function being clear, simple, intelligent 
utterance in short speeches, epigrams and 
answers. This faculty was admired as 
among no other nation, excepting the 
Greeks and Romans.'' 

18 



ESSAYS 

Women, no less than men, strove for a 
''complete individuality,'' and Michael 
Angelo and Aritino were no more a pro- 
duct of the peculiar atmosphere of the 
times than Vittoria Colonna or Ranata of 
Ferara. Women were the queens and 
centers of the social circles, and became 
illustrious without in any way compro- 
mising their reputations. The reasons 
for this were that women strove for 
beauty and strength of character as well 
as physical perfection, and because ''she 
was conscious of a state full of danger 
and opportunity/' Intellectuality and 
high sentiment held a large place in wom- 
en's lives, where usually sentimentality 
and emotion reign supreme. 

By a careful study of the manner in 
which a nation finds its amusements and 
recreations, a very just estimate may be 
formed of its civilization, for these will 
bear unmistakable impress of the thoughts 
and aims of the period. There has been 
no time in the history of the world when 
so much talent, invention and such fabu- 
lous sums of money were employed for 
the purpose of pleasure and amusement. 

19 



ESSAYS 

Such was the magnificence of these dis- 
plays that ''whole volumes might be writ- 
ten on the architecture alone/' Leonardi 
da Vinci did not disdain to use his divine 
gifts to invent machinery and personally 
to direct the costumes and decorations for 
many of these festivals, and Andrea Del 
Sarto painted chariots used in the proces- 
sions. The middle ages were essentially 
ages of Allegory, but the particular form 
of these festivals and processions may be 
traced directly to the Romans. The con- 
ditions necessary to make these displays 
successful and national were wealth, lei- 
sure and education among the nobility 
and appreciation and understanding on 
the part of the masses. It is a striking 
proof of the universal culture of the Ital- 
ians that they did so understand the won- 
derful Allegory, the antique representa- 
tions and the classic allusions. It was 
considered a part of an aristocratic breed- 
ing to be critical in such matters, and the 
masses were familiar with at least the 
poetic basis of these shows. 

''Both plastic art and poetry were ac- 
customed to represent famous men and 

20 



ESSAYS 

women; for instance, the Divine Comedy 
of Dante, the Trionfi of Petrarch, the 
Amorosa Vissione of Boccaccio, all of 
these works constructed on this principle 
and the great diffusion of culture which 
took place under the influence of anti- 
quity, made the nation familiar with the 
historic element." In Florence the sev- 
eral quarters of the city were in early 
times organized with a view to such ex- 
hibitions. 

In 1304, ''Hell was represented by 
Scaffolda and boats in the river Arno. By 
mechanical appliances figures of angels 
were made to rise and float in the air. 
The festival which called for exceptional 
treatment was the Feast of Corpus 
Christi. At this were represented a suf- 
fering Christ amid singing cherubs, the 
Last Supper with a figure of Thomas 
Aquinas, the combat between the arch- 
angel Michael and the devil, fountains of 
wine and orchestras of angels, the scenes 
of the Resurrection, and finally on the 
Square, before the Cathedral, the tomb 
of the Virgin. It opened after High 
Mass and the benediction, and the Mother 

21 



ESSAYS 

of God ascended singing to Paradise, 
where she was crowned by her Son and 
let into the presence of the Eternal/' The 
house of Borgia particularly distin- 
guished itself by magnificent displays of 
this character, as also the Court of Fer- 
ara, but owing doubtless to the introduc- 
tion of Calvinistic ideas, which found 
much favor and sympathy there, the rep- 
resentations were chiefly secular. The 
Venetian festivals were marvels of fan- 
tastic splendor, not on land alone, but on 
the Grand Canal, where in one case we 
read that ''A round universe floated, so 
immense that a ball was given inside of 
it/' The Roman carnivals were more va- 
ried in the fifteenth century than else- 
where, and they were the first to disclose 
the effect of a great procession by gas- 
light. 

The Florentine Carnival surpassed the 
Roman in a certain class of processions, 
for instance: ''among a crowd of maskers 
on foot and on horseback appeared a huge 
chariot, and upon it allegorical figures, or 
groups of figures, with their proper ac- 
companiments, as Jealousy with four 

22 



ESSAYS 

spectacled faces on one head; the four 
Temperaments with the planets belonging 
to them; the three Fates; Prudence en- 
throned above Hope and Fear, which lay 
bound before her; the four Seasons; also 
the famous chariot of death; and the 
naval car — a ship fitted up with great 
splendor/' Often fine scenes from myth- 
ology were grandly represented, which 
would fill volumes to describe. 

Napoleon the First, imitating the vic- 
torious Roman warrior, made his return 
after one of his campaigns as magnificent 
as possible, and was laurel-crowned amid 
enthusiastic admirers. 

The chief features of the social Hfe of 
the Renaissance were: First, the partial 
equalization of the classes; second, wom- 
an's social equality with man; third, a 
system of aesthetic behavior; fourth, a 
vigorous efifort for the perfection of the 
individual; fifth, a desire to become fa- 
mous and immortal by achievment; sixth, 
an efifort for pure and lofty forms of 
speech; seventh, an intense love of scenic 
display, which is shown in the carnivals, 
festivals and processions. In a word all 

23 



ESSAYS 

departments of life were elevated to the 
rank of a fine art. The mind becomes al- 
most fatigued and dazed in looking over 
this period of social splendor and immense 
intellectual activity. All sacred and pro- 
fane history, all mythological and legend- 
ary history, philosophy, poetry, painting, 
sculpture, music, many of the sciences and 
mechanical arts, were combined to pro- 
duce a perfection of life never before at- 
tained and whose brilliancy dazzles us 
even to-day. 

Much of this gorgeous coloring was 
transitory. But there were developed at 
this period divine truths, made manifest 
and permanent through art and imperish- 
able as only art can be. But Italy was 
rapidly passing the zenith of her glory. 
Art was loved and sought, not for its own 
sake, but only in so far as it w^ould excite 
the appetite for selfish pleasure and add 
to the amusement of the people. This soon 
degenerates into a love of enervating ease 
and luxury, which marks the decay of 
any nation. But the corruption of Church 
and State, and the licentiousness of the 
ruling classes, though an outgrowth of a 

24 



ESSAYS 

high state of civiHzation, the excrescence 
and fungus growth which must end in 
final rot and decay — these were not the es- 
sence, the creative spirit of the Renais- 
sance; had they been, it would not live 
to-day as one of the great world-historic 
epochs. It was an age of surpassing ego- 
ism; each individual posed before the 
world for his own glory. It was the ego- 
ism born of man's becoming self-con- 
scious and the absolute devotion of a 
nation to the perfection of the individual, 
regardless of the higher law, which recog- 
nizes the broader spiritual truth that 
man's first duty and keenest pleasure is a 
loving sacrifice to his brother man. 



25 



VITTORIA COLONNA 



yiTTORIA COLONNA. 

THE most beautiful woman, as well 
as the most beautiful character, of 
the Italian Renaissance was Vit- 
toria Colonna, the one and only love of 
Michael Angelo. This fact is of itself 
enough to immortalize her. Not only the 
greatest artist of the world loved her, but 
the whole nation bowed in admiration of 
her beauty, and reverence for her nobility 
and purity of character. 

Many women have been loved by great 
men before. It is said of George Sand 
that '7^1^s Sandeau loved her dearly, 
Chopin madly, Alfred de Musset passion- 
ately,'' but the love which Michael Angelo 
bore Vittoria was a beautiful reverential 
adoration, somewhat as Dante loved his 
Beatrice. 

Vittoria Colonna was the daughter of 
Fabrizio Colonna, of a noble and princely 

29 



ESSAYS 

Italian family, originating back in the 
eleventh century. Her mother was Ag- 
nese di Montifelto, the daughter of the 
Duke of Urbine (the birthplace of Ra- 
phael). Vittoria was born in the Castle 
of Marino, on the Lago d'Albano, in Feb- 
ruary, 1490, and at an early age, scarcely 
four years, she was affianced by her par- 
ents to Ferdinando Francesco d'Avalos, 
son of the Marquis of Pescara. For a 
term of years she was associated and edu- 
cated with her future husband, under the 
care of a sister of Pescara, in the little 
town of Ischia, a beautiful island in the 
Mediterranean, belonging to the Kingdom 
of Naples. 

Very little is given of Vittoria's early 
years, yet imagination pictures her as a 
sweet, beautiful, thoughtful child, deep, 
strong and unchanging in her affections. 
This is evinced by her devotion to her 
young lover, for although others sought 
her in marriage, she would listen to no 
other proposals. Ischia is in sight of the 
buried cities of Pompeii and Herculan- 
eum, and in full view of blazing Vesuvius. 
With all these grand, natural phenomena 

30 



ESSAYS 

around her, with the blue skies and poetic 
atmosphere, close association with rare 
and cultivated minds, and all the refine- 
ments of a high state of social and intel- 
lectual culture, we have all the conditions 
which assist in producing a character of 
rare beauty and symmetry. The poetic 
temperament could scarcely find a more 
congenial atmosphere, where nature and 
art united in creating, not only the soft, 
sensuous and pleasing, but the epic and 
grand. 

At the early age of seventeen years, 
Vittoria and Pescara were married. The 
wedding is described as unusually bril- 
liant even for those days of princely mag- 
nificence, and there is a long and curi- 
ously interesting list of the bridal gifts, 
which were truly royal in costliness and 
splendor. 

Very pertinently Trollope says, ''For 
two years she was happy and wrote no 
poetry.'' 

The most authentic portrait of Vittoria 
is one preserved in the Colonna Gallery at 
Rome. ''It is a beautiful face, of the true 
Roman type, perfectly regular, of exceed- 

31 



ESSAYS 

ing purity of outline, and perhaps a little 
heavy about the lower part of the face, 
but the calm, large, thoughtful eyes and 
superbly developed forehead secure it 
from any approach toward an expression 
of sensuahsm, the fulness of the lips is 
only sufficient to indicate that sensitive- 
ness to, and appreciation of, beauty, which 
constitutes an essential element in the 
poetic temperament. The hair is of the 
bright golden tint that Titian loved so 
well to paint/' 

There is also one in England, supposed 
to have been painted by Michael Angelo, 
a description of which is given us by 
Grimm. ''We have before us an aged 
woman. There is no longer the fair hair 
which once invested her with such a 
charm ; a white widow's veil, brought low 
down upon her brow, envelops her head 
and falls over her bosom and shoulders. 
A tall figure, dressed in black velvet, up- 
right, and sitting without support on a 
chair, the circular simply-formed back of 
which is grasped in front by her right 
hand, while the other is lying on an open 
book in her lap. There is a grand repose 

32 



ESSAYS 

in her features, a slightly pained com- 
pression about the eyes and mouth; she 
appears aged, but not decrepit; and the 
deep lines which fate has drawn are noble 
and energetic/' 

These two portraits are typical of the 
perfect woman Vittoria was, the first giv- 
ing us the beauty, grace and physical 
loveliness which nature sometimes be- 
stows upon her children, and with the 
richer accompaniment of a fine, strong 
mind and warm, constant heart in its 
youth and energy. Even in the first pic- 
ture, the promise of that dignified and 
grand old age was foreshadowed, the 
serene and noble evening of a most glori- 
ous morning of human life. 

Pescara, following the example of all 
noblemen of his time, entered the army, 
and chose for the motto on his shield, 
''On this, or by this,'' and engaged in the 
war between France and Venice. He ''re- 
ceived from Vittoria at parting a superb 
pavilion and an embroidered standard, as 
well as some palm leaves, in token of the 
hope that he would return crowned with 
honor/' 

33 



ESSAYS 

During her husband's absence, Vittoria 
occupied herself with her correspondence 
with him, and the study of Hterature, of 
the best ancient and modern authors. 
Pescara won distinguished honors, as a 
brilHant General, and was offered the 
Kingdom of Naples, a most tempting 
bribe. It is not absolutely sure that he 
contemplated accepting the bribe, or turn- 
ing traitor to Charles of Spain, because 
the plans were unsuccessful, but Pescara's 
character was laid open to the severest 
criticism of his own and of succeeding 
times. In this respect Vittoria stood in 
noble contrast to her husband, as not a 
shadow rests upon her in this affair. Her 
letters to him place her most nobly and 
loyally before the world. 

In 1525 Pescara died. Vittoria's grief 
was overwhelming, and for a time she lost 
her reason. She desired to retire to the 
Convent of San Silvestro, and did so for 
a short time, and she would gladly have 
remained within its sheltering walls, but 
the Pope, with the wisdom and Machia- 
vellian policy, peculiar to Popes and 
princes of the time, absolutely forbade 

34 



ESSAYS 

this. After a year at Rome, she returned 
to Ischia, and began those poems, on the 
loss of her husband, which form an ''In 
Memoriam,'' and a deep and constant 
study of the best masters of ancient and 
modern thought. 

Vittoria was at this period of her life 
the most beautiful woman in all Italy. 
Cities and Courts quarreled over her as a 
guest, she was the friend and correspond- 
ent of many of the greatest men of the 
day; the intimate friend of Cardinals Pole 
and Contarini and Bernardino Ochino, 
men in whose minds was kindled the fire 
of revolution, which finally resulted in the 
Italian Reformation; Ischia was the cen- 
ter of a little circle of the most illustrious 
and renowned poets and scholars; and 
Vittoria was the Priestess of that circle. 
One is reminded of that wonderful Athe- 
nian circle, where Aspasia reigned su- 
preme, but in Ischia a purer, loftier di- 
vinity inspired her devotees ; one gives us 
the Pagan ideal, the other the Christian, 
and again later the little circle of Weimar, 
where Charlotte Von Stein, Goethe and 
Schiller held high court and high thought. 

35 



ESSAYS 

Trollope tries to make much of what he 
calls the deteriorating influence of Pes- 
cara on Vittoria's character, and speaks 
particularly of her lack of patriotism, and 
suggests the husband's influence as a pos- 
sible cause, quoting Tennyson's lines : 

^'Thou shalt lower to his level day by day, 

What is fine within thee growing coarse 

To sympathize with clay. 

As the husband is, the wife is. 

Thou art mated with a clown. 

And the grossness of his nature 

Will have weight to drag thee down." 

Trollope also speaks ironically of her 
long years of lamentation over the loss of 
her husband, and suggests that she was 
doubtless as much in earnest as Petrarch 
in his adoration for Laura. 

All of these accusations are at variance 
with the facts of the history of Vittoria's 
life and character. In the first place, as 
the biographers have given us the lives of 
the two, Vittoria and Pescara, Vittoria's 
seems to be absolutely without flaw, or 
speck, or blemish. Second, the husband 
and wife were separated by war two years 

36 



ESSAYS 

after marriage, and she only saw him at 
rare intervals, after he entered the army, 
before his death; therefore, his influence 
in moulding her opinions was doubtless 
very slight, and in the few instances given 
she held her own ideas of right with un- 
yielding pertinacity. Third, patriotism is 
not an inborn sentiment, but a plant of a 
peculiar civilization, and the lack of patri- 
otism could be brought against many of 
the best minds of the age, ''for patriot- 
ism," says Simonds, ''ceased to be an in- 
stinct, just as the moral and religious sen- 
sibilities were blunted. Instead of patri- 
otism, the Italians of the Renaissance 
w^ere inflamed with a desire for cosmo- 
politan culture.'' This desire for culture, 
which was the highest ideal of the time, 
Vittoria possessed in an eminent degree. 
It is an open question as to what ex- 
tent Vittoria espoused the Calvinistic or 
^'new opinions,'' as they were then called. 
Her poems show that she at least thought 
much upon the subject then agitating all 
Italy. As she was an honored guest at 
the Court of Ferara, she undoubtedly met 
and conversed with many of the most 

3Z 



ESSAYS 

noted reformers. Calvin enjoyed the 
friendship of Margaret of Navara, and 
the patronage of Renata of Ferara, these 
two noble women were dear and close 
friends of Vittoria's, and we may imagine 
high and glorious conversation when this 
''triumvirate of noble women'' met and 
held communion with such a mind as Cal- 
vin's. Seeds of thought, sown upon soil 
so well prepared for truth, doubtless bore 
fruit. But it was fruit not destined to 
ripen to perfection. 

''While Vittoria was in Rome, she was 
received by the Pope, as became a Prin- 
cess of her rank. The Emperor, while 
in Rome, visited her in her palace; the 
Cardinals Pole and Contarini, the heads 
of the Ochino party, were her intimate 
friends; and those not linked with her by 
the interests of religious reform were at- 
tracted by her beauty and amiability, and 
that which is styled by her contemporaries 
her learning. People were proud to be able 
to reckon themselves as her friends, ador- 
ers or proteges, for her connection and 
the high consideration of her family per- 

38 



ESSAYS 

mitted her to take many under her pro- 
tection/' 

When Vittoria met Michael Angelo he 
was sixty years old, and she, though no 
longer young, was still ''beautiful, cheer- 
ful and full of intellectual activity.'' She 
possessed to an eminent degree that chief- 
est of graces in woman, exquisite tact. 
Without apparent effort, without coercion, 
without violence toward any, she seemed 
to draw the spirits of men to her by a 
power lofty and ennobling, as it was sweet 
and enticing. It was the natural, and not 
the supernatural, result of that perfection 
of character whose spirituality breathes 
through their individuality as a fine ethe- 
real essence. It is not a thing to be imi- 
tated, it is the essence of character, where 
virtue and beauty are united with high 
intelligence. 

An instance of this tact is shown where 
she changed her husband's nephew, whom 
she adopted, treated and loved as a son 
(for she was childless), from a wild, reck- 
less youth to become a sober, scholarly 
man. Again this wonderful tact is shown 
in the way she arranged to bring Michael 

39 



ESSAYS 

Angelo into the Church of San Silvestro 
to meet Francesca de Orlando, a miniature 
painter from Spain, who desired much to 
hear Michael Angelo converse upon art, 
and where Michael Angelo used these 
noble words upon art: ''True painting is 
only an image of the perfection of God, a 
shadow of the pencil with which he paints, 
a melody, a striving after harmony,'' and 
''true art is made noble and religious by 
the mind producing it,'' and the famous 
saying, "Art belongs to no land; it comes 
from Heaven," words which might be 
written in letters of fire, where all aspir- 
ants could read them as they entered the 
field of Art. They are severe, grand and 
true. 

About 1538, Contarini and Pole had 
secret hopes of filling the Papal chair aft- 
er the death of Paul, and in this hope Vit- 
toria fully sympathized, and said after the 
former's sad and sudden death, "He, Con- 
tarini, ought to have been Pope to have 
made the age happy." 

The five years previous to this were 
years of great happiness to Michael An- 
gelo, as they brought him into compan- 

40 



ESSAYS 

ionship with the noblest woman of his 
age, and for the first time in his Hfe he 
learned the sweet pleasure of yielding his 
wishes to another, to one who could fully 
comprehend him and his work, a friend- 
ship unique and rare, as it was pure and 
holy. That he loved her, and would have 
gladly taken her into his heart and life 
as a wife, is undoubtedly true, but Vit- 
toria was a widow, in heart and act; that 
their friendship was purely platonic, and 
fully, aye, cruelly, recognized as such by 
Michael Angelo, is evinced by a sonnet 
addressed to her, which is full of exqui- 
site pathos : ''That thy beauty may tarry 
upon earth, but in possession of a woman 
more gracious and less severe than thou 
art, I believe that nature is asking back 
thy charms, and commending them to 
gradually leave thee, and she takes them. 
With thy divine countenance she is adorn- 
ing a lovely form in the sky ; and the God 
of Love endeavors to give her a compas- 
sionate heart ; and he receives all my sighs, 
and he gathers up my tears, and gives 
them to him who will love her as I love 
thee. And, happier than I am, he will 

41 



ESSAYS 

touch her heart perhaps with my tor- 
ments; and she will afford him the favor 
which is denied to me." 

But another poem still more plainly 
shows the influence which Vittoria exer- 
cised over the somber life and genius of 
Michael Angelo : 

"When Godlike art has, with superior 

thought, 
The limbs and motions in idea conceived 
In simplest form, in humble clay achieved. 
Is the first offering into being brought ; 
Then stroke on stroke, from out the living 

rock. 
Its promised work the practiced chisel 

brings. 
And into life a form so graceful springs. 
That none can fear for it time's rudest 

shock. 
Such was my birth; In humble mould I 

lay 
At first ; to be by thee, O ! lady high ! 
Renewed, and to a work more perfect 

brought ; 
Thou givest what lacking is, and filest 

away 

42 



ESSAYS 

All roughness : Yet what torture lie, 
Ere my wild heart can be restrained and 
taught/' 

Though we have many poems and son- 
nets written by Michael Angelo to Vit- 
toria, there is but one scrap of her wri- 
ting to him left to us, and that is a letter 
in the possession of the British Museum, 
''though eight others are said to be still 
held back in Florence,'' and of the many 
letters of his to her, only one is said to be 
in existence, and but very few of his 
poems can be said to be certainly his. 

There were many editions of Vittoria's 
poems published, and they were read with 
avidity by all her contemporaries. 

The tenor and spirit of her poems are 
of true humility, sustained by hope and 
faith, a spirit striving for resignation and 
perfection of soul, a vivid hope of immor- 
tality, and increase of life and love, in a 
world to come. Her early sorrow, in the 
death of her husband; her deep seclusion 
for years afterwards, her devotion to 
good deeds and great thoughts, her inti- 
mate acquaintance with the best writers 

43 



ESSAYS 

of the past, and her intimate personal 
acquaintance with the highest minds of 
her own day, her character elevated and 
purified by the fires of shattered hopes and 
ambitions, and the complete downfall of 
her once powerful family, of which she 
was naturally and loyally proud, all con- 
spired to develop the poetic genius within 
her. That her poems are somewhat 
stately and scholastic is perhaps attribu- 
table to the style cultivated at the period, 
but dignified, and full of holy feeling, cer- 
tainly they are. 

With the death of Contarini and the 
reign of Caraffa, her hopes were crushed 
for the supremacy of the Ochino party, 
and she retired to Viterbo. Later came 
the final blow, when the Castles of the 
Colonnas were seized, and on her return 
to Rome, Vittoria found none of her fam- 
ily, and all was wreck and ruin of her 
earthly hopes of a return of power or 
prosperity. 

She retired into the Benedictine Con- 
vent of St. Anne dei Funarie, where she 
spent the remainder of her life. How 
powerful was her influence and how 

44 



ESSAYS 

greatly she was feared by the Inquisition 
is illustrated by the fact that twenty years 
after her death a Florentine nobleman 
was to be burned to death, and one of the 
principal crimes that was brought against 
him was the fact that he had been a friend 
of Vittoria Colonna ! 

In 1547 Vittoria failed rapidly, and died 
in February, in the fifty-seventh year of 
her age. Michael Angelo saw Vittoria 
up to the last, and it is recorded of him 
that he said after her death that ''he re- 
pented of nothing so much as having only 
kissed her hand, and not her forehead and 
cheeks also, when he went to her at her 
last hour.'' Yet here is shown the habit- 
ual, deferential and constant habit of 
mind and thought which he bore towards 
Vittoria in her life, so strong that, even 
in the agony of utter loss, of utter im- 
possibility of reproach or of reciprocation 
from her he so loved, he did not press 
upon cheek, or forehead, the passionate 
kisses which were never permitted in life. 
It was an instinct of deep reverence, as 
truly as habit, and shows the great con- 
trol which this man of fire and genius had 

45 



ESSAYS 

over himself, and makes luminous to the 
eyes of a critical world her pure and lofty 
relation with him. History ofifers not a 
parallel case of such noble friendship be- 
tween a man and woman. There is an 
almost impenetrable veil over Michael 
Angelo's influence over Vittoria, but she 
seems to be one of those deep natures, 
whose love, once aroused, burns out its fire 
of passion at the altar of the one and only 
beloved. 

We have no desire, even if we had the 
right, to peer into her heart, and see there 
its secret thoughts ; but that these thoughts 
must have been noble and pure in the 
highest degree is certain; for thought is 
the well-spring of action, and all the facts 
of her eventful life were irreproachable. 
That her influence over Michael Angelo 
was purifying as the purging fires is 
shown by his sufferings and strivings ; but 
she also brought to him such happiness as 
is rarely vouchsafed to man, for a true 
kindred soul is the chief est blessing which 
life can give. She was a benediction to 
him, entering into his gloomy soul and 
lifting it up on the eternal heights of 

46 



ESSAYS 

serenity and peace. She brought to him, 
though late in his Hfe, sweet inspiration, 
thorough understanding and S3mipathetic 
appreciation; gave him a keener mental 
and spiritual insight, and brought his 
whole nature into greater harmony with 
himself and the world. It enables us to 
see more clearly the delicate, tender and 
humane traits in that large, many-sided 
nature. It was a flood of warm, revivi- 
fying, purifying sunshine that burst upon 
Michael Angelo's life, that illuminated its 
close, leaving us with a fuller knowledge 
of the greatest artist, and giving a glimpse 
of the possibilities of sweetness and gen- 
tleness which might have characterized 
Michael Angelo's life had this sunshine 
breathed upon his rigid nature in the 
daily companionship of a happy domestic 
life. Yet sorrow and solitude are the al- 
tars to which genius so often brings the 
offerings of earthly bliss, and whose fires 
burn away all grossness, leaving us only 
the richer inheritance of imperishable 
truth and beauty. 



47 



SAVANAROLA 



SAVANAROLA. 

IN estimating human character, three 
things must be considered as pri- 
mary and formative factors. First, 
heredity; second, temperament, or consti- 
tutional idiosyncrasy ; third, environ- 
ment. In some cases the first has an over- 
whelming influence, almost depriving the 
individual of moral responsibility; for in- 
stance, inherited insanity, inebriety and 
kleptomania. Such cases are exceptional, 
but in every instance that which we in- 
herit remains a strongly modifying influ- 
ence to the end of life. 

The second, temperament, is an attri- 
bute that can be largely controlled and 
modified, but this will be a lifelong work, 
because it will confront us hourly, and 
clamor for supremacy. 

The third, environment, occupies a 
large field and embraces a much discussed 

51 



ESSAYS 

question. The Napoleonic theory, so 
boastfully expressed when its author was 
at the zenith of his power, that ''man 
makes his own circumstances,'' is con- 
fronted at once by the dismal picture of 
this same great conqueror, desolate and 
defenseless, on the Island of St. Helena. 

Men are the architects of their own des- 
tiny and weave the principal thread of 
their lives, and are responsible for their 
acts, for this is the corner-stone of any 
true ethical system. It is those who are 
unable to cope with life heroically who 
fall back upon the pitiful plea, ''Circum- 
stances were against me." This plea be- 
gan with Adam and has never lacked fol- 
lowers. 

In summing up the character of Sa- 
vanarola we shall find that he was very 
strongly influenced by his environment; 
his temperamental weakness he conquered 
almost wholly. 

He was of a delicate, proud, passion- 
ate, over-sensitive disposition, but a love 
of ease he consciously exchanged for a 
life of rigid austerity; from a shrinking, 
sensitive spirit he was urged by the fervor 

52 



ESSAYS 

of his convictions to become the most un- 
yielding and implacable of warriors. 

The ancestral blood which flowed in the 
veins of Savanarola was largely belliger- 
ent and warlike, for his ancestors, like 
himself, were men of Padua. Yet, on the 
other hand, the religious and artistic feel- 
ings were cultivated by contact with noble 
works of art, which shed their softening 
and benign influence upon his fiery dis- 
position. 

Michael Angelo was but one year 
younger; Bartolomea but eight years 
older; Perugino but nineteen years his 
senior, and Fra Angelica, who wrought 
those sweet, angelic faces which still live 
for us, had died only twenty years previ- 
ously; besides the works of all the other 
great Masters, who had left their work 
and spirit indelibly impressed upon the 
minds and hearts of the people of Italy 
and the world. 

Savanarola's nature partook of the 
epic as well as of the artistic spirit of his 
age, and accounts somewhat for the con- 
tradictions in his nature. 

Savanarola's family belonged to the 
53 



ESSAYS 

medical profession, his grandfather being 
a celebrated physician, a man of large and 
varied learning, devoted to his grandchild 
and desiring him to follow in his foot- 
steps. 

Emilio Castilar says : ''Savanarola's 
education commenced with the physical 
sciences — a course alien to his natural dis- 
position and contrary to his mental voca- 
tion. Fortunately, medicine was not at 
that time so much separated from arts 
and letters as at the present.'' This 
grandfather exercised much influence 
over the early years of Savanarola, but 
died before his education was completed, 
and his father ''restricted the training of 
his son to the science of the period," viz., 
a thorough acquaintance with the dogmas 
of the church. But his mother, a woman 
of rare gift of mind and heart, exercised 
a still stronger influence over him, an in- 
fluence which was never lost, and was 
overshadowed by a greater and stronger 
one only for a brief period, when he met 
and loved the beautiful woman belonging 
to the patrician Florentine family of 
Strozzie. But Savanarola's family was 

54 



ESSAYS 

considered far beneath them, belonging to 
the medical profession, which, strange as 
it may appear to us, was not held in very 
high respect, and to this fact we owe the 
public work and life of Savanarola, for 
the family would not hear of an alliance 
with Savanarola for their lovely daugh- 
ter. 

Thus, before he was twenty years old, 
the saddest of all disappointments and 
sorrows had entered his soul. After a 
long and severe struggle with the love and 
duty he owed to his beloved mother, be- 
tween whom and himself existed a most 
beautiful sympathy and appreciation, he 
buried himself in the cloister in April (the 
24th), 1475, from which he was to emerge 
years afterwards a melancholy, wornout 
ascetic, to yield his body to the rack of 
torture and final death. 

Emilio Castilar says of him after this 
event, entering the cloister, took place: 
''As a monk, he will have to see things of 
the world through the walls of the clois- 
ter; as a politician, he will have to look 
upon the cloister through the atmosphere 
of the world ; as a mystic, he will have to 

55 



ESSAYS 

convert moral and religious rules into 
coercive laws ; as a politician, he must give 
prayers, sermons and penitential services 
a certain revolutionary tone, certain war- 
like complexion. But with all these con- 
tradictions — possibly on account of these 
contradictions — no one in history personi- 
fies and represents with better right that 
new birth of the religious spirit presented 
in the gospel of Christ which has come 
down into the midst of society like a 
leaven of life, quickening all its institu- 
tions as with a new soul/' 

As with all true men, the political wel- 
fare of his country, as wxll as the moral, 
filled his heart with keen anxiety and he 
became thoroughly permeated with the po- 
litical atmosphere of his time. 

The state was unsettled and heated; it 
was like living under the shadow of a 
volcano; church and state were at war 
with each other ; Popes and Princes fought 
for supremacy. The same spirit which 
actuated the internal wars and dissensions 
between Guelphs and Ghibilines two cen- 
turies before, in Dante's time, filled the 
hearts of the different factions, and the 

56 



ESSAYS 

political welfare and freedom of Flor- 
ence was as dear to the fiery heart of the 
religious enthusiast as centuries before it 
had been to the melancholy, far-seeing 
soul of the divine poet. 

Something of the belligerent spirit of 
the times may be imagined from a little 
story. When Charles of Spain, with a 
grand army, pressing to the gates of 
Florence, said, 'If you do not comply with 
our terms, we will blow our trumpets," he 
was grandly and proudly answered by 
Capponi, one of the ''ten" who composed 
the Senate, "Then we will ring our bells." 
This, the ringing of the bells, was the 
signal which had been agreed upon by the 
Florentines to take up arms against the 
French. 

Savanarola was the advance guard of 
that mighty army which was to come with 
fire and sword a half-century later to 
electrify the Kingdoms of Europe, to 
usher the light of the Reformation, ban- 
ners of which were borne by Luther, 
Calvin, Huss and Knox. 

Like all great minds, Savanarola was 
far in advance of his time. The prophetic 

57 



ESSAYS 

spirit which is one of the elements of gen- 
ius, but which to the ignorant and super- 
stitious seems miraculous, is only far- 
sighted wisdom, and a knowledge of uni- 
versal truth, based upon history and phil- 
osophic insight. Savanarola grasped these 
historical truths because he could ''read 
between the lines,'' and knew that great 
changes must come to his beloved Flor- 
ence. He knew that the tidal wave had 
swept as far in the direction of depravity 
and error as it could go, and that reac- 
tion must set in. Into his hands he 
thought was given the command and 
power to close the floodgates of sin and 
error, and stop the devastation which 
must inevitably follow unless the tide was 
turned. 

A great diversity of opinion has ever 
existed in regard to the character of 
Savanarola, as well in his own as in sub- 
sequent times, and while some have con- 
sidered him a saint and a martyr, others 
have stigmatized him as an impostor and 
demagogue. This difference of opinion 
was the logical result of the contradictory 
nature of the man. One writer very per- 

58 



ESSAYS 

tinently says: ''It has been asked how it 
was that Socrates, after thirty years of 
pubHc, notorious and efficacious discours- 
ing, lost his hold upon the people of Ath- 
ens; and the reason has been found to be 
in the character and circumstances of the 
Athenians. Savanarola exercised a power 
and sway over the minds of the people and 
over the history of Florence never pos- 
sessed by Socrates, and the people turned 
against him with a completeness and bit- 
terness which far exceeded the madness 
of the people of Athens/' 

By a close analysis of Savanarola's 
character, we shall find that his uncom- 
promising, unyielding harshness had 
within itself the sure prophecy of failure, 
for ''we have now learned that to paralyze 
personal liberty beyond what is absolutely 
necessary for the protection of others is to 
induce evils far greater than any which we 
are able to suppress/' That Savanarola 
did not grasp this principle is evident 
through all the acts of his eventful life. 
It is not strange, nor even discreditable 
that he did not ; for liberty and patriotism 
in the larger sense were not a part of the 

59 



ESSAYS 

movement of the Italian Renaissance. 
These principles did not belong to his 
time. This charge could be brought 
against many other great minds of this 
period. 

His uncompromising severity is well il- 
lustrated by this story told of him. In 
one of his sermons, speaking of the cor- 
ruption in the church, he said, ''In the 
primitive church were chaHces of wood 
and Prelates of gold; in these days, the 
church has golden chalices and wooden 
Prelates !" It was a most heroic thing to 
proclaim war heroically upon the vices of 
a vicious age, especially when these vices 
were incarnate in the rulers of church and 
state. But Savanarola feared neither 
Prince nor Pope and hurled his javelins 
of fierce denunciation, meaning to cut 
deep into the heart of sin and corruption. 

It is one of the peculiarities of genius 
that it overreaches itself, that it has in it 
the spirit of prophecy and inspiration. 
When Savanarola told his people that he 
was "called of God," "That God had re- 
vealed his divine will to him," though us- 
ing this rather ambiguous language, he 

60 



ESSAYS 

recognized his purely human powers, and 
when not borne along by the passion of 
his feelings, took reasonable views of his 
work. But he had launched his bark 
upon a stream whose current he did not 
fully realize or fathom. At last, when he 
did realize it, it was too late, and in a 
moment of weakness, after long hesita- 
tion, he yielded to the satanic demands of 
his enemies and consented to pass through 
the ''test of fire," and this moment marked 
his doom. We cannot assume positively 
what the result would have been had he 
never for one moment yielded his higher 
convictions to this demand; possibly the 
present result would have been the same, 
for the tide had set and could not be easily 
changed, but not so weakly superstitious 
would he have appeared upon the pages of 
history. 

Savanarola believed with his whole 
soul in the work he had to do and the re- 
forms he advocated; but there came a 
time, there was a point at which he be- 
came uncertain of himself. He did not 
lay claim to the power of performing 
miracles, but his great fault, even sin, lay 

6i 



ESSAYS 

in the fact that he did not from the first 
discourage the superstition that such mir- 
acles or evidence might be granted in con- 
firmation of his power and doctrines. 

Savanarola's character in its deep in- 
tensity and fierce power of denunciation 
is Dantesque. He belonged strictly to the 
church militant. He did not realize that 
virtue is of slow growth; he had not 
learned to wait. He planted his seed in 
the ground and then called upon the sun 
and rain to pour upon it, and all nature to 
hasten her operations, to bring forth the 
full grown tree and fruit at once. He was 
intensely practical and had magnificent 
executive abilities, but he lacked imagina- 
tion and took little heed of individual 
rights and needs. Such impetuous men 
seem to be necessary in the development 
of truth and humanity, and they carry the 
torch of reformation into the very heart 
of complacent mediocrity. Such men are 
ever the pioneers of God's work in the 
world. 

Savanarola's character stands for mar- 
tyrdom to the higher law, because he 
would obey the voice of his own soul and 

62 



ESSAYS 

conscience rather than the voice and au- 
thority of the Church. James Freeman 
Clark, speaking of Jean d'Arc and Savan- 
arola, says, ''Both were Lutherans before 
Luther and Protestants before Protest- 
antism. Neither had any quarrel with the 
Church as such, both desired to be its 
faithful and obedient servants, both be- 
lieved its doctrines and gladly received its 
sacraments, but each was compelled by 
the awful voice of conscience to refuse 
obedience to the authority of the Church.'' 
Why Savanarola should have failed at 
last so utterly and completely longer to 
hold his power over the people of Flor- 
ence is a difficult question to answer, per- 
haps impossible to answer. It cannot be 
found to rest alone on his puritanical, in- 
tolerant spirit, for severe as this was, he 
could melt the hearts of his listeners to 
the sweetest humility and bring tears to 
the eyes of the stoic and conviction to the 
cultured and philosophic. It cannot be 
found to rest alone on the character of the 
Florentines themselves. It cannot be 
proven that it was alone in the viciousness 
of the age; for vicious as it undoubtedly 

63 



ESSAYS 

was, it had scarcely passed the meridian 
of a period whose glories in art, literature 
and social culture outrival all other his- 
toric periods; an age ushered in by the 
somber genius of Dante, followed by a 
long line of the brightest and greatest 
minds that ever challenged the admiration 
and reverence of a hero-worshiping world. 
Neither can it be found in any peculiar 
culmination of circumstances. Where, 
then, can we look for the cause of the dis- 
mal going out of this great luminary? 

The one cause more than any other 
which contributed to this unhappy end was 
a failure on the part of Savanarola to 
cling unfalteringly to his highest ideal, to 
be absolutely true to his innermost con- 
victions. He had become uncertain of 
himself, and as a last tremendous effort 
and struggle for supremacy, he weakly 
yielded to the insistence of his enemies 
and the urgent persuasion of his unwise 
and misguided friend, San Silvestro, and 
consented to that pitiful ''test by fire.'' 
This moment marked his doom. There is 
strong evidence that he realized this and 
felt it most keenly. It was the vain cling- 

64 



ESSAYS 

ing to a straw of one who knew he was 
drowning. The proof of this Hes in the 
fact, first, from his association with his 
grandfather and his scientific and medical 
education, even sHght as it was in those 
days, must have taught him something of 
the law of nature, and the relation of 
cause and efifect. He must have learned 
that it is the nature and law of fire to 
burn ; and that God does not interrupt the 
workings of his immutable laws. His 
study of physical sciences had doubtless 
taught him this much, hence his reluctance 
and hesitancy to undergo the test by fire. 
But he was still in the thraldom of super- 
stition and bound by the chains of author- 
ity. Second, he did not lay claim to the 
performance of the miracles, or make 
many of the prophecies which his ardent 
friends claimed for him. His burning 
words, often spoken in metaphor, were 
exaggerated and distorted by the ignorant 
and over-zealous. Third, he did not use 
every effort from the very first to discour- 
age the belief that he could perform such 
a miracle as the passing through fire un- 
burned. Fourth, it was the fear of fail- 

65 



ESSAYS 

ure and the almost certain knowledge that 
his power over the people was ebbing, and 
this knowledge, coupled with a certain 
stubbornness, inherent in his blood, which 
was exemplified again and again in many 
acts of his Hfe, made him willing to grasp 
even this straw, in the hope of saving his 
power over the people whom he loved. It 
had in it a certain Machiavellian element 
which he often used in his relation with 
the Princes and Popes, to whom he was 
opposed. Fifth, he yielded his reason and 
will to superstition ; he was not yet a free 
soul. The strongest proof of this lies in 
the fact that in the last sad moments of 
his life, when under the severest torture, 
when every other question was answered 
with clearness and precision, when his ac- 
cusers came to the question of miracles 
and prophecies, his language at once, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, became dim, un- 
certain, ambiguous. Time and again the 
same questions were put to him with the 
same result. It was the last effort of a 
soul to be absolutely true to itself. _ ^ 

There was no hesitancy, no ambiguity, 
in Luther's answer to his tormentors at 

66 



ESSAYS 

the Diet of Worms, '1 can retract noth- 
ing, here I take my stand," and this spirit 
was repeated again by Ridley, Latimer 
and John Rogers at the stake and Robert 
Emmet on the scaffold. 

It is one of the glories of our age that 
such a spectacle is well-nigh impossible as 
the ''test by fire/' Science forbids, com- 
mon sense forbids. Something of its folly 
sank into the soul of the martyr, Savana- 
rola, but he was not ready to burst the 
bonds that held him captive. But to him 
belong the honor and the glory of paving 
the way for those who came after him to 
live up to the light of freedom. 



^7. 



SHELLEY, 



SHELLEY. 

SheIvIvEy's Views of^ Nature; Parai^lei.- 

iSM AND Contrast With Other 

Poets. 

MOST modern poets have looked 
to Nature for inspiration, con- 
solation, sympathy and perennial 
freshness, the sacred shrine whereon to 
lay the incense of each burning thought, 
or calm the troubled spirit. The unfath- 
omable mystery of Nature's processes, the 
marvelous ebb and flow of the tides, the 
regularity of the returning seasons, the 
beauty of the sea and sky and flower, the 
harmony of revolving worlds, and systems 
of worlds, have ever kindled the imagina- 
tion and excited the curiosity of the true 
poetic soul. In earlier times these phe- 
nomena only excited fancy, admiration, 
wonder, awe or fear. As knowledge and 

71 



ESSAYS 

science advance, revealing with telescope 
and microscope myriad worlds in infinite 
space, the exquisite beauty hidden in the 
commonest weed, the wonderful relation 
of one form of development to another, 
the variety and beautiful interdependence 
of each to all and all to each, the admi- 
ration and wonder do not grow less, but 
the poetic imagination, guided by the 
revelations of Science, revels in truth and 
beauty, knowing for certainty that we 
may worship Nature, and through Na- 
ture, Nature's God. The poet sees some- 
thing of that love and wisdom which is 
existent in and through all external phe- 
nomena, and being thus related to Nature 
becomes her reverent devotee and seeks 
through her laws to pierce the veil of the 
unknown and find a solution of those 
problems of Life, Death and Immortality 
which has been the craving of all high 
souls in all times. The poet's mind is 
filled with glorious visions of the Unseen, 
while his enraptured eyes behold with 
keenest joy the perfection and beauty 
around him. His poetry partakes of this 
knowledge and this ecstasy, and becomes 

72 



ESSAYS 

through his genius a world poem, because 
it draws its sustenance from the infinite, 
and rests upon the highest canons of art, 
which demands some Universal Truth for 
its basis. 

Shelley was a child of Nature and saw 
her with unfettered vision. Throwing off 
early in life the yoke of superstition, he 
came to her untrammeled and she yielded 
to him her rarest secrets. His soul, with 
all its surging, swaying passions strug- 
gling for expression, finds at all times 
sympathy, correspondence and inspiration 
in the changing moods and forms of the 
material universe. 

Shelley has been truly called a poet of 
the Nineteenth Century, for in this mar- 
velous youth, this radiant Apollo, we find 
the close observation and keen analysis of 
the scientist united with the fiery passion 
and clear insight of the poet and seer. In 
him were united in a rare degree the 
''Wisdom of Love, with the Love of Wis- 
dom.'' I cannot forbear to mention the 
first quality of Shelley's poems, although 
the second is that to which this paper is 
properly assigned. 

73 



ESSAYS 

The two great passions of his Hfe, love 
of humanity and love of Nature, were so 
interwoven that it is difficult to consider 
them independently. For his views of 
Nature were so mingled with his views 
of human life, the Creator of the world, 
and its ultimate perfection, that all of 
these are embraced in his anthems of pro- 
phecy and rejoicing. 

The first impression received in reading 
Shelley's poems from Queen Mab to 
Prometheus Unbound is his love of hu- 
manity. This was the fire that kindled 
each thought and lighted each glowing 
word. He anticipated the fever which has 
risen to white heat to-day, when the re- 
ligion of humanity by whatsoever name 
called is the highest expression of Christ- 
liness, the undying principle of all relig- 
ions or ethics and the chief hunger of all 
true souls. This love, coupled with a 
marvelous insight into the inevitable trend 
of human destiny upward and onward to 
a goal of final perfection, was not simply 
a hope, it was a sublime faith, based upon 
the recognition of the divine possibilities 
inherent in the nature of man. This 

74 



ESSAYS 

largeness of vision and prophetic insight 
placed him far above and in advance of 
his own time, and accounts somewhat for 
the apparent contradictions and the mis- 
understandings of his work and genius. 

The second quahty in Shelley's poems 
is his adoring love of Nature, his perfect 
sympathy and oneness with Nature, and 
his scientific and speculative view, a view 
unknown and undreamed of by the ancient 
poets. Dowden, in speaking of Queen 
Mab, says: ''Seldom before in English 
poetry had the unity of Nature and the 
universality of law, the idea of a Cosmos 
been expressed with more precision or 
more ardent conviction: seldom before in 
poetry had the vast and ceaseless flow of 
being, restless, yet subject to a constant 
law of evolution and development, been so 
vividly conceived.'' 

Nature, or, as Shelley preferred to say, 
the Spirit of Nature acting necessarily, 
and at present producing indifferently 
good and evil, giving birth alike to the 
hero, the martyr, the bigot, the tyrant, 
poisonous serpent and innocent lamb, yet 
tends unconsciously upward to nobler de- 

75 



ESSAYS 

velopments, purging itself of what is weak 
and base. Shelley's Spirit, which circles 
half-mournfully, half-exultantly above the 
ruins of the past, which rises on the wing 
and screams at sight of all oppression and 
frauds done under the sun in this our day, 
flies to the future and embraces it with 
lovers' joy. That his ideal of the future 
golden age may be smiled at by common 
sense as impracticable, need give us small 
offense. In following the sun, he loses 
his way in a radiant cloudland; yet still 
amid bright voluminous folds of error he 
is on the track of the sun. 

Shelley's views of Nature were not 
alone the result of his poetic insight, but 
were based upon the substantial study of 
Philosophy and Science under such mas- 
ters as Pliny the Elder, Bacon, Rousseau, 
Bailey, Locke, Hume and Newton. He 
was constantly searching for the ''Mani- 
festation of something beyond the present 
and tangible object." - He pierced through 
things to their spiritual essence. In Na- 
ture there was no voice, however soft and 
low, that he did not hear, no shade of 
beauty that he did not perceive, no crash 

76 



ESSAYS 

of thunder or roll of cataract that he did 
not revel in. He early recognized the re- 
lation of cause and effect, not revealed to 
him alone by an array of facts and figures 
of the calm, patient scientist, but blazing 
forth in flash of inspiration and revela- 
tion. For all art ends in Science and all 
poetry in a Philosophy. For Science and 
Philosophy do but translate into precise 
formulae the original conceptions which 
art and poetry render by imaginary fig- 
ures. Michael Angelo and Raphael were 
followed by Galileo; after Shakespeare we 
had a school of naturalists leading up to 
Harvey; after Bacon, Descartes and New- 
ton, and after Goethe, Darwin and Hux- 
ley and Spenser. 

At the early age at which Shelley wrote 
Queen Mab we see this scientific and 
speculative thread running clearly and un- 
mistakably through the poem. He says: 

''Spirit of Nature ! here 
In this interminable wilderness 
Of worlds, at whose immensity 
Even soaring fancy staggers, 
Here is thy temple. 

77 



ESSAYS 

Yet not the Lightest Leaf 

That quivers in the passing breeze 

Is less instinct with Thee. 

Yet not the meanest worm 

That lurks in groves, or fattens on the 

dead, 
Less shares thy eternal breath/' 

In the exquisite little poem, ''The 
Cloud," he says: 

''I am the daughter of earth and water 

And the nursling of the sky, 

I pass through the pores of the ocean and 

shores, 
I change: But I cannot die/' 

In these lines we see a recognition of 
the indestructibility of matter and of the 
law of transformation and organization 
ever going on around us, creating its mir- 
acles of beauty and life in infinite variety. 

In the Prometheus Unbound, where we 
find the matchless songs over the glad day 
which is to be, the moon sings thus : 

''Music is in the sea and air. 
Mingled clouds soar here and there ; 

78 



ESSAYS 

Dark with the rain new buds are dream- 
ing of, 
'Tis Love- All Love." 

And the Earth takes up the refrain and 
answers : 

''It interpenetrates my granite mass, 
Through tangled roots and trodden clay 

doth pass 
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flow- 

ers; 

And Demigorgon, answering Asians 
breathless questions, says: 

''If the abysm 
Could vomit forth its secrets — 

But a voice 
Is wanting, the deep truth is 

Imageless ; 
For what would it avail to bid 
Gaze 

On the revolving world? What 
To bid speak 

Fate, time, occasion, chance 
And change? To thee 
All things are subject but 
Eternal Love/' 

79 



ESSAYS 

Words could not better or more finely 
express the poet's reliance upon that love 
which is coexistent with lav/, or a more 
perfect recognition of the Divine and eter- 
nal. 

He reaHzed that man is a microcosm, a 
reflection of that power which holds the 
universe in harmony, and which he called 
the ''Spirit of Nature," because he did not 
wish to limit or define the limitless and un- 
definable. None but the most reverent 
and humble spirits thus confess the limita- 
tions of the finite mind, and the impossi- 
bility of absolutely unclouded knowledge 
of the Infinite. 

Goethe. 

In Goethe's works we find a wonderful 
similarity of view of Nature, with the 
same love, sympathy and delight in study- 
ing her mysteries. Goethe says: ''Life 
is not light, but refracted color.'' Here the 
thought is repeated in metaphor drawn 
from Goethe's study of color. The water- 
fall is a symbol of human endeavor, im- 
petuous, never ending, destructive, yet in- 

80 



ESSAYS 

spiring and creating force, and the rain- 
bow is the divided ray of the intolerably 
keen white light of truth, as it is reflected 
in and overhangs the monuments of life. 
Shelley expresses exactly the same 
thought in a different image, where he 
says, in Adonais: 'Xife like a dome of 
many colored glass stains the white ra- 
diance of eternity." In the second part 
of Faust we find in one of the songs of 
the chorus of the maidens : 

''Given again to the daylight are we 
Persons, no more 'tis true 
We feel it and know it. 
But to Hades return we never ! 
Nature the ever living 
Makes to us spirits 
Validest claim, and we to her also." 

Taylor says of these lines : ''The twelve 
Maidens of the Chorus divide themselves 
into four groups, relinquish their human 
forms and enter into the being of trees, 
echos, brooks and vineyards. Goethe was 
so well satisfied with this disposition of 
an antique feature, for which there seems 
to be no place in the romantic world, that 

8i 



ESSAYS 

we can hardly be mistaken as to his de- 
sign. The transfusion of Nature with a 
human sympathy belongs exclusively to 
modern literature.'' 

It is not the dryad but the tree itself, 
not the creed but the spirit of the moun- 
tain which speaks to us now. We have 
lost the fascinating existence of ancient 
fable in their human forms, but Nature, 
then their lifeless dwelling, now breathes 
and throbs with more than their life, for 
we have clothed her in the garments of 
our own emotion and aspiration. 

No fairy tale of nymph or dryad can 
compare in wonder with the transfigura- 
tion which the woods themselves reveal to 
us, in the ever-returning birth, death and 
resurrection of her changing forms. 
Again in the second part of Faust, Thales, 
the Greek philosopher and mathematician, 
who thought, more than three hundred 
years before Christ, that ''All things were 
instinct with life," is made to say: 

^^Nature, the living current of her powers 
was never bound to day and night 
and hours : 

82 



ESSAYS 

She makes each form by rules that never 

fail, 
And 'tis not force even on a mighty scale/' 

These lines express Goethe's scientific 
creed. In 1831 Goethe said: ''The older 
I grow the more surely I rely on that law 
by which the rose and the lily blossom." 
But nowhere is Goethe's idea of Nature 
so finely expressed as in the Proemium to 
God and the World : 

^'What were the God, who sat outside to 
scan 

The spheres, that 'neath His circling fing- 
ers ran? 

God dwells within and moves the world 
and moulds 

Himself and Nature in one form enfolds. 

>i^ ^tc ^Sf ^If ^tc ^tf ^tf 

Thus all that lives in Him and breathes 

and is, 
Shall ne'er His puissance, ne'er His spirit 

miss." 

Emerson. 

Our own philosopher and poet, Emer- 
son, seems at times to touch the very 

83 



ESSAYS 

spirit and pulse of Nature, and we feel 
her throbbing life in his epigramatic lines. 
In Wood Notes he tells the story of evo- 
lution : 

"To the open ear it sings 

Sweet the genesis of things: 

Of tendency through endless ages 

Of Star-dust and star-pilgrimmages, 

Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 

Of the old floods' subsiding slime. 

Of chemic matter, force and form, 

Of poles and powers, cold, wet and warm, 

The rushing metamorphosis 

Dissolving all that fixture is. 



For Nature beats in perfect tune, 
And rounds with rhyme her every rume, 
Whether she work in land or sea. 
Or hide under ground her alchemy. 
The wood is wiser far than thou. 
The wood and wave each other know. 
Not unrelated, unaffied. 
But to each thought and thing allied, 
Is perfect Nature's every part, 
Rooted in the mighty heart." 

84 



ESSAYS 

Browning. 

Among our modern poets, none have 
sung the truth revealed by Science and 
the metaphysical and intimate relation of 
spirit and matter more splendidly than 
Robert Browning. It pervades all he says 
like a fine ethereal fire, whose glow lights 
up the dim regions of futurity and gives 
him those broad views of love and faith 
which are rooted deep in infinity. He too 
based his hopes of man's ultimate perfec- 
tion and immortality on that law which 
holds the worlds in their orbits and tints 
the smallest flower. Browning was one 
who had with great care, deep thought 
and conscientious research, joined the ever 
enlarging ranks of those modern thinkers 
who are striving to bring harmony out of 
chaos, chaos caused by the rapid change 
in the last half century of old landmarks, 
old ideals. The influx of positive knowl- 
edge in place of authority and vulgar em- 
piricism, and the persistent research into 
the causes of all phenomena, physical or 
spiritual, mark our era. Close upon the 
heels of this age of analysis will follow a 

85 



ESSAYS 

still more glorious age of synthesis, whose 
dawn we already see creeping slowly over 
the horizon. In Paracelsus, Browning 
thus traces the law of evolution of pro- 
gression : 

''Hints and previsions of which faculties, 
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about 
The inferior natures, and all lead up 

higher. 
All shape out dimly the superior race. 
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out 

false. 
And man appears at last. So far the seal 
Is put on life; one stage of being com- 
plete. 
One scheme wound up: and from the 

grand result 
A supplementary reflux of light. 
Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 
Each back step in the circle. Not alone 
For their possessor dawn those qualities. 
But the new glory mixes with the heaven 
And earth; man, once descried, imprints 

forever 
His presence on all lifeless things: the 
winds 

86 



ESSAYS 

Are henceforth voices, waiHng or a shout, 
A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh. 
Never a senseless gust now man is born/^ 
In Asolando, Browning's last work, we 
find the ripened thought o£ his eighty 
years expressed in a short poem called 
"Reverie": 

'1 truly am, at last ! 
For a veil is rent between 
Me and the truth which passed 
Fitful, half guessed, half seen, 
Grasped at — not gained, held fast. 

I for my race and me 
Shall apprehend life's Law: 
In the legend of man shall sfee 
Writ large what small I saw 
In my life's tale, — ^both agree. 

All is effect of cause: 
As it would, has willed and done 
Power : And my mind's applause 
Goes, passing laws each one. 
To Omnipotence, lord of laws. 

I have Faith such end shall be : 
From the first, Power was — I knew. 

87 



ESSAYS 

Life has made clear to me 
That, strive but for closer view, 
Love were as plain to see. 

As the record from youth to age 

Of my own, the single soul, 

So the world's wide Book: One page 

Deciphered explains the whole 

Of our common heritage/' 

Homer. 

The limits of this paper will not admit 
of an exhaustive survey of the objective 
poets, of whom Homer is the ancient rep- 
resentative, as Shakespeare is the modern. 
The Greeks delighted in the sunny out- 
ward manifestation of Nature, not her 
mysterious depths. The special and dis- 
tinctive office of the poet in ancient times 
was to give delight; to recount to eager 
listeners heroic, valorous deeds of godlike 
men. 

Life was divided into good and evil 
without complexity; subjective musings 
were not dreamed of; controversies be- 
tween Religion and Science were un- 
known; doubt had not been born in the 

88 



ESSAYS 

Homeric time ; the eternal ''Why" had not 
entered the poet's thought to breed its 
legions of unanswerables. It was reflec- 
tion that changed the spirit of freedom 
and simplicity of the Greeks. In Homer 
we are borne along as on a swift current 
by his matchless descriptions, splendid 
narration of events rapidly succeeding 
each other, by his characters, perfectly 
drawn and clearly defined, and through 
all a diversity and simplicity which has 
been the marvel and delight of ages. But 
though possessing vivid and boundless im- 
agination, nowhere does he show any sign 
of that inward searching, that quest for 
the hidden meaning of things. Gladstone 
says of Homer: 

"Of the impersonated unseen no poet 
has made such efifective employment; of 
the unseen, except as connected with im- 
personation, he never, I think, makes use, 
unless on two occasions, once when the 
ships of the Phaiakes (Phi-a-kes) are 
swift as a wing or as a thought, and the 
other where he compares the agitated 
mind of Hera with the quickened intelli- 

89 



ESSAYS 
gence of a man stimulated and informed 

by travel." 

How different the modern poet; every 
line is an invocation to the unseen, every 
thought an interrogation, every sign an 
appeal for light. Yet the epic of the fu- 
ture will embody the grand onward march 
of progressive thought and life, and m.ust 
find its final reconciliation in Law and 
Love. 

Conclusion. 

What was the spirit of Nature to which 
Shelley bowed his head with the rever- 
ence of an idolator? It was the great 
first cause which lies back of all phenom- 
ena, material and spiritual, which men 
have worshiped under different names 
and different forms since the world's re- 
lief from the barbarism of base fear, be- 
ginning with reverence for something 
above him, which in the evolution of 
thought finds its best expression in the 
reverence for one's self or the soul of 
man, as the highest creation, the divine 
and immortal. 

He recognized that all beauty, all har- 
90 



ESSAYS 

mony is the direct result o£ a cause inde- 
finable, but a natural development and se- 
quence, the secret of which he is ever 
striving to find. 

A keen poetic insight which flashes 
forth in revelations of the future, whose 
reverberations will roll down the coming 
centuries to kindle to renewed activity 
men's thoughts and purposes and clarify 
the atmosphere of gross materiality. 

Shelley's love of Nature was not alone 
sensuous, though his ear thrilled to every 
vibration of sound and his eye delighted 
in every tint of beauty. He found a par- 
tial answer at least to his questionings, 
and his aspirations. 

His views of Nature, though alien to his 
own time, have been largely verified by 
modern Science. There was a quality in 
the man and his poems akin to Nature, 
vast, luminous, tremulous with light in- 
tangible, impalpable. 

But his music is permanent, for he is 
allied to that small choir of choice spirits 
who are the harbingers of the perfecti- 
bility of the human race. In his own beau- 
tiful words we may say: 

91 



ESSAYS 

^^Mourn not for Adonais. Thou 

Young Dawn, 

Turn all thy dews to splendor, for 

From Thee 

The spirit thou lamentest is 

Not gone. 

He is made one with Nature ! 

There is heard 

His voice in all her music. 

From the moan of thunder 

To the song of the night's sweet bird. 

The splendors of the firmament 

Of time 

May be eclipsed, but are 

Extinguished not: 

Like stars to their appointed height 

They climb. 

And death is a low mist which 

Cannot blot 

The brightness it may veil when 

Lofty thought 

Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 

And Life and love contend in it, for what 

Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live 

there 
And move like winds of light on dark and 

stormy air." 

92 



THOUGHT, THE PARENT OF ORIG- 
INALITY 



THOUGHT, THE PARENT OF 
ORIGINALITY. 

EACH age must write its own books. 
Meek young men grow up in 
libraries, believing it their duty 
to accept the views which Cicero, which 
Locke, which Bacon have given; forget- 
ful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were 
only young men in libraries when they 
wrote these books/' — Emerson. 

He who accepts the theory, or truth, 
full-fledged, all worked out in detail, from 
the brain of another, loses very much, 
even though he may comprehend the thing 
perfectly and grasp it wholly. When man 
works out his own problems he puts into 
the old truth (for truth is never new) 
that which gives it fresh life and vigor. 
He reclothes it with that fine something 
which is a part of his own being. The 
truths underlying the Christian religion, 
and the Platonic philosophy, were before 

95 



ESSAYS 

Christ or Plato; for truth, like law, was, 
is, and ever will be. But these minds, 
grasping the germinal truths, moulded 
them into form and gave them palpable 
existence. The glory of Jesus and Plato 
is the weaving of their spirit in and 
through these truths, making them lu- 
minous to the world. Just this touch of 
individuality is the secret of all creative 
work, and is what we call genius. The 
sculptor's ideal, the artist's spirit, the 
fires of divine revelation it is which makes 
marble speak, canvas glow, music thrill 
and poetry stir. The difference between 
artistic and inartistic work is the differ- 
ence in individual power and insight. This 
it is which gives permanence and tenacity 
to all art creation and is seen in all effort 
from the simplest forms of material work- 
manship to man's highest conception of 
law and order in the universe of God. 
Genius is always accompanied by his twin 
brother — independent individuality— and 
these two are linked with a third — mar- 
velous courage. The genius who announ- 
ces absolute truth is usually fortified by 
a moral courage as wonderful as the crea- 

96 



ESSAYS 

tive faculty itself. Genius is not given to 
all men, but to each is given a talent, and 
it is a sacred duty for each one to use this 
talent and to think and act for himself, for 
he is not an integral, but a part of the 
whole brotherhood of humanity, a link in 
the endless chain of being. Whether this 
thought be helpful and luminous to others, 
gathering its followers and lending its ra- 
diance, or remains within the quiet limits 
of one's own soul as guide and light, mat- 
ters not; we have been true to ourselves 
and true to a great ethical principle. Any- 
thing short of this individual effort is 
either stolen, borrowed or imitated. A 
modern writer says: ''The true original 
genius does not kick out of the traces of 
the universe, but heroically carries it for- 
ward; not imitating the old, but trans- 
forming into it the new, wherein lies just 
his originality.'' 

St. Augustine says: ''Christianity has 
existed since time or the world began. 
Christ's coming gave to the principles he 
advocated the name it now bears." To 
accept crystalized truth without knowing 
anything about the wonderful process of 

97 



ESSAYS 

crystalization may be a mental pleasure, 
but is lacking in that keener, finer joy 
which one may experience who has him- 
self traced each step in the crystalization. 
All may have a simple appreciation of the 
general phenomena of the sun, moon and 
stars, but how grand is the conception of 
the universe! Man should use his brain, 
chemicals, reason and analysis to disin- 
tegrate the atoms of truth or thought, and 
then build up for himself; then the final 
synthesis will have a fullness, a roundness, 
a clearness that stamps at once the origi- 
nal thinker from the mere imitator. 

To arrive at the truth we should begin 
by slaying the dragons, the negatives, as 
they arise successively in the mind; when 
this labor has been accomplished, and 
there are no more dragons to slay, the 
mind will be filled with a radiant sunshine 
of affirmative. Then are we truly placed. 
Then have we truly found ourselves. If 
we leave the mind unsettled, chaotic, we 
not only destroy the pleasure an unvvaver- 
ing affirmative gives, but we destroy its 
efficacy as a guiding principle of life, 
which is the chief object of all truth or 

98 



ESSAYS 

knowledge. The healthiest attitude of the 
mind is one of questioning. There are 
many questions which in their nature can- 
not be answered with entire satisfaction; 
these have been most truly named — the 
great ''unknowables.'' Here we reach our 
limitations, but until we have sounded 
with our plummet every question that 
arises for us, whether this plumb-line be 
long or short, it is our most sacred duty 
and blessed privilege to use it. 

The perceptive genius, or man of talent, 
may be a brilliant, shining light, but he 
has no permanency, excepting as he be- 
comes identified with some idea of another. 
He is the Prophet that bears the word to 
the people. Perception is often mistaken 
for creation. What we have an undoubted 
right to is this : We may see, and adore ; 
and far better still if we catch something 
of the divine aspiration and fervor which 
has made this creation possible; if we be 
induced to ''go and do likewise,'' this art 
creation has spoken its best lesson to us. 
Inspiration to efifort is the lesson all true 
art teaches. This is not a discouraging 
view ; it simply recognizes individual limi- 

99 



ESSAYS 

tations and capacities, and without such 
intelHgent recognition no true work can 
be accompHshed. 

We may accept crystaHzations of 
thought in the same spirit that we accept 
a work of plastic art. It is ours to emu- 
late and enjoy, but if we receive from it 
only a passing gratification, which may be 
coldly intellectual or warmly sensuous, 
then that thought has not spoken its best 
word to us. What is the highest word 
spoken to us by all art products? It is 
this: If we are drawn towards the art- 
ist's ideal; if we apprehend the meaning 
and content of the work, and if we feel 
this so strongly that we shall turn from it 
with longing and desire to attain also to 
some ideal — not necessarily to this par- 
ticular expression of an ideal, but to some 
one; if we are touched by the fires of the 
artist's aspiration, and desire to emulate 
his achievements, and are touched so sin- 
cerely, so fervently, deeply that we are 
induced to press forward with new energy, 
new zeal, new resolve, new activity into 
some field of labor peculiarly our own, 
then, and not until then, has this thought, 

100 



ESSAYS 

or this art creation, spoken to us from its 
highest to our highest. What we may 
call the appreciative genius, while not the 
highest, differs greatly from the common- 
place, and to these original genius owes 
much; it is to these that the seer-few 
speak. It is they who carry down the 
ages the word or work of the masters. 
''There are leaders and followers,'' and it 
is to this large class of appreciative ''fol- 
lowers'' that we owe tradition. Tradition 
is born of perception and appreciation, 
and to tradition we owe history. Genius 
alone could not make history, though it 
is the source of all history. There is a 
vast gulf between a man of talent and the 
commonplace; for the latter cannot even 
experience vicariously the inspiration, or 
aspiration, of another. These are unim- 
aginative, sluggish, dull, unthinking ; they 
are the "passive souls" — who dwell not 
even in the Inferno, but remain in Limbo, 
"who by not doing, not by doing, lost." 
All great minds have been free and origi- 
nal thinkers. All men who have given 
new impulses and movements to the world- 
spirit. "In the spiritual order, as in the 

lOI 



ESSAYS 

physical, to live is to change; to cease to 
change is to cease to live/' To verify this 
truth we have only to glance backward 
over the past and recall the noble Socrates 
of old, the patient Galileo, the mighty 
Luther, the steadfast Giordano Bruno, the 
belligerent Savanarola, and all the long 
line of martyrs that have yielded up their 
lives for their thought. 

It is not strange that the world's Christs 
have been given supernatural births, for 
each has stood among the common masses 
of humanity around him, as solitary moun- 
tain upon a vast plain. So out of the gen- 
eral order of the universe do they seem, 
that in ignorance and superstition man- 
kind has resorted to the supernatural to 
account for their existence, and these 
seers, conscious of the divinity of the 
truths they bear, accept metaphorically 
what is meant literally. This, acting upon 
the minds of their followers, coupled with 
the worship inherent in human nature, 
which rejoices in finding an incarnation 
of its ideals, clothes these saviors in gar- 
ments woven wholly of the imagination, 
and their words, only dimly or partially 
1 02 



ESSAYS 

understood, are given a meaning far dif- 
ferent from that intended. When Christ 
said: ''1 and my Father are one/' he did 
not mean it in the Hteral sense, but in the 
sense of the divinity of truth, in which all 
mankind are one with the Father, when 
they comprehend His Divine purpose and 
obey His Divine commands. After eight- 
een centuries of Christian precepts hu- 
manity has not yet risen even to the just 
conception of Christ's teachings, much 
less to living these truths. It has taken 
eighteen centuries for mankind to gather 
the kernel and spirit of Christ's teachings 
and to fully realize the one grand central 
truth He came to proclaim, namely, the 
Divine human and the human Divinity. 

Why Christ, the child of simple, loving 
parents, born in quiet Nazareth town, 
should have seen, comprehended and 
solved the problems of life around Him, 
and given us those universal principles 
which hold the essence of ethical life for 
all time is an interesting question, and is 
not answered by any theory of immacu- 
late conception or supernatural birth. 
Why He carried the world's sorrow and 

103 



ESSAYS 

pathos in His heart, was bowed with the 
weight of its sin, yearned over it with a 
deep and tender love, and gladly yielded 
up His life for this love; why His brood- 
ing spirit should have seen, as no eye had 
ever before seen with such sun-lit clear- 
ness, such supernal wisdom, such radiant, 
far-reaching vision, must ever fill us with 
wonder and admiration. But this one 
truth is apparent in the life of Christ as 
of others. Had Christ followed the tra- 
ditions of His race, had He walked in the 
familiar and beaten paths of His ances- 
tors, had He been wedded to the forms 
and ceremonies of His people, or had 
yielded Himself unthinkingly to His en- 
vironment, had not torn Himself away 
from the temptation to glide smoothly 
with the popular tide, He would never 
have so stirred the w^aters of life anew 
for mankind. Why Dante, ''the articulate 
voice of ten silent centuries," should speak 
those clarion notes that still echo down 
the centuries and shall be heard through 
long ages to come; why this somber-vis- 
aged, far-seeing genius beheld the soul's 
journey and epitomized it in that match- 

104 



ESSAYS 

less allegory where all, if they will but 
look, may see the reflex of themselves, is 
answered, partly at least, by the fact that 
he thought long and deeply, and independ- 
ently upon the problems of life and death, 
sin and the judgment, and took no other 
man's view of life , political, social or 
moral. 

To each individual is given some task 
to perform, some problem to solve, which, 
if he rightly and bravely enunciate, first 
making clear to his own mind, will leave 
the world brighter and better for his hav- 
ing been. The true attitude of mind, and 
the only one in which man can do noble 
and efficient work, is absolute freedom of 
thought. This is what our age persist- 
ently demands and what freedom means. 
It is what our age is working out in its 
practical and spiritual affairs, and is be- 
ing demonstrated every day in intellectual, 
political and social life. This freedom of 
thought will not in the future, as it has 
so often in the past, mean banishment, re- 
vilement, martyrdom and death. True 
freedom will be tolerant, broad, all-em- 
bracing, all-benevolent, all-loving, dis- 

105 



ESSAYS 

carding nothing in the past which has 
helped mankind in its progress, and haiHng 
with outstretched arms all that is new, 
true and beautiful. 



io6 



PRAYER 



PRAYER. 



"The self-same moment I could pray, 
And from my neck so free 

The Albatross fell off, and sank 
Like lead into the sea." 

*'He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small, 

For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 



IT would seem strange to any truly 
thoughtful person that the question 
of the use and beauty of prayer 
should be a debatable subject, did we not 
remember the origin and low conception 
of prayer which obtained in the earlier 
ages, and which even to-day are not en- 
tirely eradicated from our religious life. 
The begging for some favor of the All- 
Wise Creator, some petty desire to be 
granted, some selfish wish to be fulfilled, 
seems to us a shocking conception of 
prayer. But there is a conception of 
prayer which makes it at once helpful, 
real and permanent. 

109 



ESSAYS 

The necessity for prayer in the human 
soul in moments of its highest aspiration, 
deepest sorrow, or keenest ecstasy, is its 
own justification, and one proof that 
prayer will be satisfactorily answered, 
though by no means answered always as 
we, with our finite vision, would wish. 

The materialistic school would banish 
prayer entirely or relegate it to a purely 
scientific field. They cannot deny the re- 
flex action, but would not assign to it any 
higher possibilities. Reflex action is cer- 
tainly one of the elements of true prayer, 
because any effort of the soul reaching 
forth in unselfish desire Hfts it into a 
higher atmosphere, and this reflex action 
of the mind upon itself elevates and en- 
nobles. But this is not all. We have 
learned that the Inferno is a state of 
mind; that Heaven is within us, and not 
without; and that prayer is an attitude of 
the soul, not a begging for some material 
blessing. Prayer, then, is an attitude of 
the soul. Let us remember this, and see 
if we may learn how it is possible to at- 
tain this attitude. One may also say that 
prayer is an attitude of the mind, for no 
no 



ESSAYS 

soul groveling in low or sordid desires can 
be said to be prayerful, and because, in 
its reaching upwards to the source of all 
things it touches the Infinite. It gives 
breadth to character, because it embraces 
in its beautiful spirit all sweet human re- 
lations and experiences, and remains with 
the soul, as one of its eternal possessions. 
And it gives depth, because the awakened 
mind reaches into the very heart of the uni- 
verse, seeking there the laws of its being. 
Prayer follows the law of growth and 
development, as other attributes of the 
mind. If we use our reasoning faculties 
over a mathematical problem seriously, 
persistently, knowledge will shine in upon 
our understanding, and reveal to us the 
truth we seek, and this seeming miracle is 
repeated again and again in our experi- 
ence. It is ever the same wonderful rev- 
elation, and the joy we feel when the 
light leaps up in our minds, like a flash 
of lightning, revealing the truth that was 
before hidden — this is of itself enough to 
teach us to have faith that every effort in 
the right direction will, sooner or later, be 
rewarded, as the solution of a mathe- 
III 



ESSAYS 

matical problem is. If a muscle of our 
arm be weak and feeble, and we use it 
gently, quietly, continuously, obeying at 
the same time the laws of physical well 
being, growth, strength and use will come 
to the enfeebled member. 

We have also a spiritual faculty of the 
mind. This spiritual faculty, if developed 
and rightly used, and in that mood which 
we call prayerful, meaning simply a reach- 
ing forth and upward to the source of all 
light, in an attitude of childlike receptivity 
and earnest effort, such prayer will be re- 
warded ; by what laws we do not now know, 
but an answer will come, in the form of 
clearer insight, greater moral strength, 
heavenly comfort, and possible joy. 

Prayer is the activity of the spiritual 
part of our nature, and is doubtless gov- 
erned by fixed and immutable laws, just 
as the physical and mental nature of man 
are governed by such laws. 

It matters little that we cannot define 
or prove the existence of the spiritual or- 
gans, which are co-related to this spiritual 
function. But we know, through the ne- 
cessity in our own being and by faith, cor- 

112 



ESSAYS 

roborated by the history of man's spiritual 
growth throughout the world, and in all 
ages, verified by observation and experi- 
ence, that such organs and such functions 
must exist. 

The need for prayer in the human soul 
is its own justification for being, and is 
common to the whole race of mankind, 
partaking in the lower phases of the nature 
of fear, begging and pleading, and in the 
higher of worship, praise and rejoicing. 

The first requisite for a true attitude of 
prayer is to gird one's self with the ''rush 
of humility," and an honest belief that we 
deserve the sufferings brought or inflicted 
upon us, and a determination not to shrink 
or run away from conflict, nor to be 
crushed by opposing forces ; but a rational 
acceptance of consequences, and an ear- 
nest desire that through this lacerating 
strife wisdom and holiness shall become 
ours. 

To receive true blessedness through 
prayer one must drink of the waters of 
Lethe, that Lethe ''Whither to lave them- 
selves the spirits go, w^hose blame hath 
been by penitence removed." And this is 

"3 



ESSAYS 

not the Lethe of the Hindoo Nirvana, but 
a continued and never-ending series of 
transmigrations from our lower selves to 
our higher selves, pressing on from height 
to height, until, having passed through the 
Inferno and Purgatorio, we reach the di- 
vine heights of Paradiso, where shine the 
white lights of serenity and peace. Here 
''the word becomes flesh" and the incar- 
nation a reality. 

To make this attitude of mind habitual, 
we should begin with the child at the tend- 
erest age. Teach him to let the mind, in 
some quiet hour each day, return in upon 
itself, to become self-searching, to bring 
the mind to feel thankfulness for blessings 
received, sorrow for wrong-doing, and 
there rekindle the fires of aspiration. Let 
him be taught to carry all its conflicts, all 
its passions, all its hopes, to this internal 
subjective tribunal, this sacred altar, with 
fires ever burning ready for the sacrifice, 
the pleading and the praise. The sacrifice 
of all selfishness, the pleading for all good, 
the praise and thankfulness for all joy. 
We may, if we choose, teach the child to 
discard the material altar, built of wood 
114 



ESSAYS 

and stone, or covered with cloth of gold, 
to which the ancients brought peace offer- 
ings of slaughtered goats and rams, of 
sweet herbs, and of those things most 
precious to them. Nor is it altars of pol- 
ished wood, nor fine vestments, nor sooth- 
ing music, nor aesthetic coloring, nor pol- 
ished rhetoric, the heart, and that the true 
oil to keep the fires burning is the sacrifice 
of selfish desires and gross passions. 
Through this action will be developed a 
clearer consciousness of right and the 
ability to seize quickly the best and the 
true, which will in time become habitual, 
and finally there will grow up, in the ex- 
panding soul, that keener insight into 
what are the real and eternal verities, and 
a nearness to all that is most desirable and 
beautiful in life. And later will come that 
consciousness and knowledge of the di- 
vine purposes, and the close fellowship 
with God, which, in its final synthesis, is 
unity with God, and the recognition of the 
divinity and brotherhood of mankind. 
This preparation would afford an impreg- 
nable fortress against sin and temptation, 
because this habitual attitude of the mind 

115 



ESSAYS 

would at once repel all sudden attacks of 
evil, which we have most cause to dread. 

The good effect of a rational under- 
standing of the meaning and purpose of 
prayer is illustrated by a fact from life. 
Two little boys had a quarrel. Neither 
would acknowledge that he was in the 
wrong, nor would they speak to each other 
for many weeks. One little fellow told 
his mother, ''I have not repeated the whole 
of the Lord's Prayer since my quarrel 

with G . I did not and could not say 

'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
those who trespass against us.' '' But 
finally, when he had brought himself to 
say those lines feelingly and truly, he was 
the first to speak, and the breach was 
healed. Here was the prayer and here the 
answer to prayer; whether by reflex ac- 
tion, the interposition of Providence, or the 
action of the will alone, it matters little; 
the result was all that could be desired, 
and the activity of the child's spiritual na- 
ture strengthened his moral courage ; and 
was a general uplifting of his whole na- 
ture towards the higher and better. 

It is not enough that we cultivate the 
ii6 



ESSAYS 

intellect alone, for we have abundant evi- 
dence that there may be the finest culture 
and a cold, hard, barren spiritual nature. 
The brilliant men and women of the Ital- 
ian Renaissance furnish some of the most 
striking illustrations of this, and our nine- 
teenth century renaissance resembles the 
spirit of that remarkable period. There 
is the same spirit of egoism, of worship 
of the antique, love of luxury, love of 
learning, and also love of display. These 
are all characteristic of both the past and 
present times. The cultivation of the in- 
tellect alone is often a mere delightful 
pastime, a mental and emotional excite- 
ment, which is purely aesthetic, and may 
be a most selfish act. We have learned 
that neither statuesque beauty nor culti- 
vated intellect can take the place of that 
interior attitude of the mind which in- 
cludes both the ''good of the intellect" and 
that supreme beatitude of spirit which 
'Vejoiceth not in iniquity, hopeth all 
things, endureth all things.'' But in our 
day there is an element which acts as a 
restraining power, even though uncon- 
sciously. We are direct heirs of those 
117 



ESSAYS 

principles of Puritanism which made and 
molded our grandsires, and we cannot 
lightly throw off our birthright. There is 
with us a moral hurt for wrong-doing, an 
underlying protest from this puritanic 
spirit, like the still, small voice to those 
grand men who made the love and worship 
of God the first duty and pleasure of Hfe. 
Therefore, let us not discourage prayer, 
but rather cultivate this highest language 
of the soul, and strive to make the prayer- 
ful attitude habitual, an ever-present fac- 
tor in our lives, as the rational man makes 
his reason the arbiter of all vexed ques- 
tions. This will be an equipment with 
which to do glorious battle-work in the 
world. For, take life on whatever basis 
you may, there are stern, warlike elements 
in it which never will and never can be 
eliminated, and the success or failure of 
life will largely depend upon the choice of 
weapons he shall select with which to fight 
life's battles. And if we would keep in 
the tide that bears upon its bosom the 
grand movement of the world-spirit, we 
must seek to obtain and retain the prayer- 
ful attitude. 

ii8 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CONCEPTION 
OF HUMANITY 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CONCEP- 
TION OF HUMANITY. 

WHAT we may call the Historical 
Perspective is now the recog- 
nized necessity for the rational 
treatment of any subject. We cannot take 
one isolated fact, or person, or period, and 
draw our conclusions from these alone. 

In considering the Nineteenth Century 
Conception of Humanity, it is necessary 
that we take the whole grand movement 
of mankind, the history of the human race, 
photograph it upon the mind in a complete 
picture, before we have even a right to 
form an opinion, or pass judgment upon 
it. To trace out in detail the relation of 
one event, or epoch, to another; to ascer- 
tain the cause, or causes, by which certain 
effects were produced would be too tre- 
mendous an undertaking for one essay. 
But we may indicate very briefly the line 
of march of the ideas which have cul- 

121 



ESSAYS 

minated to-day in such a glorious concep- 
tion of humanity; in what particulars it 
differs from other times, and wherein it 
is an advancement upon the past. This 
movement, which antedates history, will be 
found to preserve throughout cohesion 
and unity, despite all apparent changes 
and differences ; that there is no such thing 
as hap-hazard work in the growth of 
man's moral perception, or the develop- 
ment of the moral idea. Looking down 
through this long historical perspective, 
we shall see the present in its true and 
proper proportions. The history of the 
growth of the moral idea is preserved and 
revealed to us by the patient researches of 
the archaeologist, the persistent investiga- 
tion of scientists, the untiring efforts of 
scholars and the true interpretations of 
mythology and history transmitted to us 
through art and song and story. 

The Nineteenth Century idea of Hu- 
manity is best defined by the word ''altru- 
ism,'' a word which is used to express the 
great humanitarian movement now sweep- 
ing over the world, and to which all classes 
of writers, thinkers and workers are bend- 

122 



ESSAYS 

ing their best efforts. It expresses the 
highest conception of man's relation to 
man, and contains the basic principle of 
all the different activities for the ameliora- 
tion of the race under the name of Social 
Science. 

In the cc«isideration of our subject we 
find it necessary, first, to learn as nearly 
as may be the origin of the idea of ''al- 
truism,'' or the feelings and principles 
which gave rise to it, following its growth 
down to the present time; second, to seek 
those causes which have been most potent 
in its development; third, wherein the 
Nineteenth Century Conception differs 
from that of other great historical peri- 
ods, and wherein it is an advancement 
upon the past. 

At the earliest period of time of which 
we have any historic record, the family 
was already in a somewhat advanced 
stage. We also find that the idea of the 
family and religious ideas have developed 
side by side. Indeed, society was at first 
dependent upon and governed by religious 
conceptions. The family life of the an- 
cients developed around their domestic 

123 



ESSAYS 

Gods, and finally the state itself was gov- 
erned by this paternal idea. The earliest 
races of men could not grasp the idea of 
a Creator, beyond the father of the fam- 
ily, from whom they derived the spark of 
life. The tombs of their fathers were lo- 
cated near the house to give access for 
frequent worship. Their Gods therefore 
were ever present. Annual banquets or 
feasts were held in honor of these 
''manes," as they were called among the 
Greeks and Romans, meaning the spirits 
of their departed parents. Sacrifices were 
constantly ofifered for propitiation or pro- 
tection. ''Marriage among the Greeks 
and Romans was controlled by the same 
principle, the continuity of the family, sur- 
vival, was the object of most jealous care, 
adultery was most impious because it 
might taint the very God-head, celibacy 
was forbidden, the women of the family 
were made subordinate. The rights of 
property were fixed exclusively in the head 
of the family, the right of succession and 
inheritance was controlled and almost 
every act of life was regulated by this 
system. Every house had its altar and its 
124 



ESSAYS 

altar fire, renewed every year." But as 
population increased it became apparent 
that the family could not take in all in- 
dividuals, so the tribe was formed, and 
afterwards the curia, city and state, but 
still controlled by the family idea. This 
paternal form of government was finally 
superseded by one based upon the idea of 
contract, where law and strict obedience 
to its commands ruled domestic as well as 
public life. This contract society was a 
necessity, as the boundaries of territory 
widened and population increased. But 
this form of government in its first con- 
ception and practice was fraught with ex- 
treme severity and harshness. The Ro- 
man state grew and flourished by the in- 
sistence upon one idea, the idea of hold- 
ing together the people to fortify and en- 
rich the patricians, and developed the idea 
of loyalty and obedience to the state in 
the highest degree. But this power, born 
of superior brute force, by territorial con- 
quest and slavery, naturally became se- 
vere and oppressive. Unlimited power in 
the hands of king or ruler not only ig- 
nored the rights of the individual, but 

1^5 



ESSAYS 

grew rapidly to absolute tyranny. The 
exacting demands of the state were re- 
flected to the family, and bore with es- 
pecial cruelty upon women and children. 
This movement was, however, an effort 
for justice, and finally brought about a 
conflict between the individual and the 
state which, growing slowly and with 
many modifications, has finally resulted in 
the conception of the freedom of the in- 
dividual, where men rule themselves, and 
by protecting their own rights protect the 
rights of others. This idea of obedience 
permeated the religious life for many cen- 
turies, until its abuse resulted in the Re- 
formation. 

We cannot trace in detail the great 
epochs of history which have successively 
followed each other, or their influence as 
felt for a longer or shorter period of time, 
according to the truth which such epoch 
especially demonstrated. 

We know something of the Greek, Per- 
sian, Egyptian, Roman, Indian, Jewish 
and Christian streams of civilization and 
their co-mingling in a thousand smaller 
streams until their waters have inundated 

126 



ESSAYS 

nearly all periods of recorded time and all 
traces of man, but each had lifted human 
life and human endeavor upon a still 
higher plane. Though each stream will 
be found to contain much that is imper- 
fect, it is man's work in the world to sift 
the real from the unreal, the true from 
the untrue, and leave for the next genera- 
tion the largest kernel of absolute truth 
which we can find and preserve. 

The same principle holds true of great 
minds as of great epochs. Ever and anon 
rises some master mind upon the horizon, 
as Socrates, Confucius, Buddah, Cfirist 
and a long line of Seers, Prophets, Saints 
and Martyrs, who give new impetus, new 
life and new energy to the growth of the 
moral idea. Doubtless there will ever 
arrive, as time and occasion are ripe for 
them, others bearing new messages to the 
world. Hence we find that no one mind 
holds within itself the totality of truth. 
These men and these world-historic epochs 
will be found to bear a direct relation to 
and interdependence upon each other, and 
form a chain of unity, whose links reach 

127 



ESSAYS 

backward to the beginning of history and 
forward to the end of time. 

The poetry of history is to follow the 
rhythmical movements of action and re- 
action of one civilization upon another, 
and to find their reconciliation in the 
knowledge that all are operating under 
eternal, unchanging and beneficent law. 

Among the more immediate causes 
which have led up to the world-wide in- 
terest felt to-day in the betterment of 
mankind, none are more potent than the 
men whose fiery words brought about that 
stupendous movement — the French Revo- 
lution — and from which dates so much of 
the Nineteenth Century progress. Rous- 
seau and his compatriots furnished largely 
the momentum which finds expression to- 
day in the many organizations for the 
freedom and comfort of the masses. 
Whatever may be said of these men and 
their measures, they created a new gospel, 
and inaugurated a new idea of political 
and social life, based upon personal lib- 
erty. 

Strange as it may seem, we owe, in no 
small degree, to the Guillotine the princi- 

128 



ESSAYS 

pie of freedom which we now enjoy. ''The 
nature of the Revolution is not affected by 
the vices of the revolters ; for this is purely 
a moral force/' 

Great epochs of this kind do not spring 
up Minerva-like in one day, but are the 
culmination of decades or centuries of 
slow growth in the direction of justice and 
mercy. When Russia freed her serfs and 
America emancipated her slaves, it was 
simply the bursting forth, volcano-like, of 
the hidden fires which had apparently 
slumbered for generations. It was the 
triumph of the moral idea over brute 
force. 

What we have said in regard to especial 
epochs and especial individuals, namely, 
that they have a direct relation to each 
other and swell the sum total toward the 
moral idea, is also true of all systems and 
Utopias that have been the dream of phi- 
losopher, philanthropist or sage from 
Plato down. The many distinct move- 
ments which are presented to us to-day are 
really but parts of a grand whole and ap- 
peal to different minds through their very 
diversity. Tolstoi, in homespun clothes, 

129 



ESSAYS 

making his own shoes, will appeal to many 
who would not be reached by Mill or Gun- 
ton. Others will build air castles with 
Bellamy who would not be touched by 
Browning or Emerson. Another will seek 
the philosophy of this new renaissance 
through Kant or Hegel. 

The poetic mind seeks the meaning of 
this unrest, and the reconciliation through 
the genius of Dante, Shakespeare or 
Goethe. Many are striving to unravel the 
mysteries hidden in theosophy and psy- 
chology. Statesmen are seeking the bet- 
terment of man's condition through the 
revision of existing laws or the making 
of new ones. Each diverse opinion and 
activity has its leaders and followers. This 
is not detrimental, but, on the contrary, is 
productive of the highest good. 

One of the most potent factors in this 
altruistic movement, and one that is pe- 
culiarly our own, is the revelations made 
by modern science, because science rests 
upon verifiable hypotheses. This does not 
imply that all truth is verifiable. But in 
the future the science of psychology will 
doubtless reveal many laws the governing 

130 



ESSAYS 

spirit of which we know nothing of to-day. 
The researches of the Christian Scientists 
and Psychologists, though now in a dan- 
gerously crude state, are groping towards 
this end. 

It is the opposite poles of the battery 
that bring forth the spark of light ; so it is 
through the touch of opposite lines of 
thought that truth will flash forth. This 
will make us tolerant of all efforts and re- 
veal to us the unity of all activities. 

Our Nineteenth Century idea of human- 
ity is a culmination of the moral idea 
which we inherit from the long past, and 
its growth has been in a continuous line 
of ascent. We also find it to be in the in- 
herent nature of things that humanity 
should progress and not retrogress. If 
at times there has been a seeming stagna- 
tion, or even going backward, it has been 
a passing phase only, for human nature 
must, sooner or later, rise to the level of 
its source, which is the infinite. 

In the development of man's triune na- 
ture, the moral is the last, as it is the high- 
est and slowest to ripen to perfection. But 
it is an immense step gained from the first 



ESSAYS 

conception of duty in the heart of primi- 
tive man, engendered by purely selfish and 
egotistic motives of perpetuating himself 
through lineal descent, to the lofty ideals 
that prevail to-day, which include all hu- 
manity in its altruistic consciousness. 

We now come to the important question 
— Wherein do our Nineteenth Century 
ideas difif er from those of other great his- 
toric periods? We find the fundamental 
difiference to lie in four essential points : 

First, the idea of God, or the Creator 
of the universe. 

Second, a truer conception of the rights 
of others. 

Third, the quickened sense of personal 
responsibility. 

Fourth, that this humanitarian move- 
ment is in favor of no special religious 
creed, or class of persons, or sex, but has 
for its object the rounded perfection of 
every individual, and the well-being and 
happiness of all sentient creatures. 

First, primitive man, as we have seen, 
did not and could not have any conception 
of God or Deity such as we mean when 
using these words. This is also true of 

132 



ESSAYS 

many savage tribes to-day. From the 
Ghosts of ancestors, revered and propi- 
tiated, up through all the various concep- 
tions which have held sway over the minds 
of men from time to time, being now the 
worship of wooden images, now certain 
animals, now the forces of nature as re- 
vealed in the changing phenomena of 
storm and sunshine, day and night; now 
the worship of many Gods and now of 
one. These different ideas brought down 
to us through sacred and profane history, 
through the rise and fall of states and em- 
pires, through the birth and death of 
various civilizations, through all the beau- 
tiful mythological disguises, through all 
literature and art, until it is finally re- 
vealed to us in that marvelously beautiful 
declaration which says — ''God is love/' 
and the highest service of the soul is — 
love to God and love to man; that this 
love and this service is not in asceticism, 
nor exclusion, but is active and inclusive. 
Second, our conception of what is due 
to others is clearer and broader than ever 
before, and reaches deep enough and far 
enough to embrace an abstract idea of 

133 



ESSAYS 

right. While it is true that history fur- 
nishes many illustrations of individual 
men and women who have sacrificed all 
for an abstract principle, as Socrates, 
Savanarola and Luther, we have risen to 
the conception of.the principle of universal 
freedom. 

Third, in no other age have the ideals 
of men and women attained to such 
heights of personal purity and personal 
responsibility. Never before have men 
realized the divine possibilities inherent in 
human nature, and never before have 
these possibilities been more ardently 
loved, more keenly felt, or more earnestly 
sought after. 

Fourth, our civilization is built, not 
upon one single idea, but has grown from 
large conflicting parties in church and 
state. Not only in politics and religion do 
men differ, and labor for what they con- 
sider the right and true; but in nearly 
every private effort, or public organiza- 
tion, the rights of the individual are re- 
spected and private opinion tolerated. 
Thus one party acts as a corrective and 
restraining influence upon the other, 

134 



ESSAYS 

The man or party who sees that regen- 
eration of the race must come only from 
the betterment of man's physical environ- 
ment, and would direct all his efforts to- 
wards regulating the hours of the work- 
ingmen, or by giving them better homes, 
or better food; is balanced by the party 
who sees that man's spiritual and^mental 
wants are often keener and more absolute 
than the physical. This diversity of opin- 
ion and effort will counteract the tendency 
to run to extremes and keep up the equilib- 
rium. These different elements, particu- 
larly the altruistic, working side by side 
with our immense material prosperity, will 
make such a catastrophe as happened to 
Greece and Rome impossible. 

It is apprehended by many that our 
splendid achievements in material pros- 
perity, in mechanics, in science and the 
fine arts will deaden our aspiration for 
spiritual things. But when we consider 
the immense gain to the masses in phys- 
ical comfort, in education, in leisure for 
culture, in general happiness, as compared 
with many epochs in the past, we shall 
see that the average of humanity is far 

135 



ESSAYS 

happier, even if more discontented, and 
more ambitious than at any other time. 
This is more true of our own beloved 
country than elsewhere. Far better is it 
for a nation, as well as an individual, that 
it has the ferment in its blood of a holy 
discontent. Without this no growth to 
either is possible, and stagnation, disease 
and death must follow. 

Another factor, and one destined to be- 
come of great importance in the future, 
is the superior education and position of 
women. When we remember that it is 
not so very long since women have been 
thought to be without souls. 

The early church, with its magnificent 
structure of gorgeous forms and cere- 
monies, employed woman's fine emotions 
to keep alive her altar fires. Woman's 
devotional nature, her keen mental wants, 
and the finer passions of the heart have 
heretofore found in formal religious ob- 
servances a large field of activity. But 
to-day woman is called to a higher con- 
secration of her powers than embroider- 
ing altar cloths or priestly robes. 

The exquisite angel-faced Madonnas 
136 



ESSAYS 

''Wrought in a sad sincerity/' by the ear- 
nest passion of the artist souls of the past, 
and whose deification of motherhood has 
added not a Httle to the growth of the 
true worship of woman, would seem to be 
superseded to-day by the ''Madonna of 
the tubs,'' and a holy zeal to rescue for- 
lorn and suflfering women everywhere. 

The gospel of the divinity of human 
nature comes with a new revelation, and 
a new hope, especially to woman. Woman 
now realizes that any violation of her na- 
ture, mental, moral or physical, is fol- 
lowed by the law of retribution, for law 
makes no sentimental discrimination in 
favor of her sex. This larger position of 
women carries with it an immense respon- 
sibility, and its force in our modern civi- 
lization is incalculable. Goethe, true seer 
and prophet that he was, realized what 
this influence was to be when he used 
those imperishable words — "It is the 
eternal womanly which is to draw us on- 
ward." 

The sacredness and the purity of the 
family is also being more and more con- 
sidered and insisted upon. Despite the 

137 



ESSAYS 

discussion of Mona Caird, E. Linn Lin- 
ton and Grant Allen, despite decadents, 
ego-maniacs and degenerates, it is in all 
essential features an improvement upon 
what has gone before. Despite the ques- 
tion we so often hear, ''Is marriage a fail- 
ure?" and much we know to exist that is 
unhallowed, we feel sure the consensus of 
the Nineteenth Century will give a ring- 
ing negative reply. 

The problems raised by Max Nordau, 
Benjamin Kid and others will eventually 
be answered to the benefit of coming gen- 
erations. 

Another important element is the fact 
that we do not hold the blessings of cul- 
ture and education as an especial privi- 
lege of any one class or condition of peo- 
ple. We do recognize that ''life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness'' is the right 
of all mankind. Out of the conflict of 
diverse opinions we may confidently hope 
for the development of systems, educa- 
tional and philanthropic, which will be 
particularly adapted to our present ideas 
and necessities. That we possess the free- 
dom to discuss these questions without 

138 



ESSAYS 

fear of torture or ostracism, and of dem- 
onstrating our theories and methods, is 
our especial privilege. 

Again we find that a greater respect 
for life is a marked characteristic of this 
Century, Not alone human life, but life 
in all its manifold forms. This is well at- 
tested by the humane societies in all large 
cities. This is an effort to create finer 
sensibilities, especially in the young, to- 
wards all kinds of cruelty and suffering. 

In man's growing sensitiveness to pain, 
we see one of the chief elements of true 
culture. 

Through our larger international com- 
munication we are brought face to face 
with the sufferings by cold and hunger of 
the Irish Peasantry; we thrill with horror 
at the torture practised upon Russian 
prisoners ; or we are torn with pity when 
we read of "Prisoners of poverty at home 
or abroad"; or, when reading "In Dark- 
est England," we feel that life can hold 
nothmg more of sweetness and light for 
us until those three million of souls are 
rescued from perishing in the sea of de- 
pravity and sin. Being thus forced to see 
139 



ESSAYS 

and recognize these facts by the changed 
conditions, externally, we are driven by 
this knowledge, and the finer impulses 
from within, to make an effort for the 
relief of suffering humanity everywhere. 
Intellectual culture alone will not give 
us this delicate sensitiveness, for we 
read that the highly cultured Leo X. 
shot condemned criminals for his own 
amusement in the yard of the Vatican. 
''Only when intellect has been wedded to 
unselfish love the ideal man will have 
appeared/' 

The scientific probing knife of Dr. Nor- 
dau has revealed to us many of the causes 
of the mental, moral and physical diseases 
of our century. But even this all too pes- 
simistic and fanatical writer has at the 
last this hopeful word to say of the fu- 
ture of mankind: ''Humanity is not 
senile. It is still young, and a moment 
of over-exertion is not fatal to youth; it 
can recover itself. Humanity resembles 
a vast torrent of lava which rushes broad 
and deep from the crater of a volcano in 
constant activity. The outer crust cracks 
into cold, vitrified scoria, but under this 
140 



ESSAYS 

the mass flows, rapidly and evenly, in 
living incandescence/' 

Our own philosopher, Emerson, says, 
''We think our civilization at its meridian, 
but we are only at the cock-crowing and 
the morning star/' 

The moral or altruistic sentiment has 
the force and persistency of eternal law 
in it. Blunted, disfigured, dragged 
through fire and blood, it survives all 
changes, all wars, all discussions. Wheth- 
er we see this truth through the eyes of 
philosophers, who tell us that duty or the 
''moral imperative'' lies inherent in the 
soul of man, or whether we believe with 
the scientists, that in the evolution of life 
it is impossible for wrong to triumph over 
right, that it is as necessary that the hu- 
man soul should ultimately reach perfec- 
tion as for bodies to follow the law of 
gravitation, we see that the moral idea 
is a positive entity, a real and active force 
in the universe. It has worked its way 
through immense resistance, resistance 
offered by ignorance and selfishness. But 
this principle, growing slowly, like the Al- 
pine Glaciers, as it moves onward through 

141 



ESSAYS 

human nature, changes the moral senti- 
ments of humanity. The aggregate of the 
moral idea as it has accumulated from age 
to age is stupendous, and has the force and 
sanction of infinity. 

Fortunately for us, that we have out- 
grown the morbid doctrine so thoroughly 
taught and insisted upon by the mediaeval 
fathers, that our duty must be dolorous 
and one of rigid self-sacrifice. We have 
learned that ''pagan self-assertion is one 
of the elements of true worth, as well as 
Christian self-denial.'' In the future all 
service of humanity will be a joy, free, 
spontaneous and bountiful, as the lover 
to his beloved, or the mother to her child. 

Through all evolutional developments, 
through all forms of religious worship, 
through all societary life, through all lit- 
eratures and art, and all individual effort 
nothing has been lost, but all changes, 
whether volcanic or peaceful, have tended 
to the betterment of mankind. Every 
martyr that has died in the long past, by 
fire or sword, has added so much to the 
sum total of that ''Spirit which makes for 
righteousness.'' The men and women who 

142 



ESSAYS 

to-day are dying in Siberian exile will ha- 
sten the freedom of that great Empire. 
All altruistic activities now sweeping over 
the hearts of mankind but swell the ag- 
gregate of this regenerating spirit. 

''One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost." 

This is what the Nineteenth Century 
Conception of Humanity means, and what 
it is working out with quickened pulse and 
loving heart-beats. 

Sophocles, speaking of his great pre- 
decessor in the tragic art, said, ''^schylus 
does what is right without knowing it.'' 
If this is true of genius, it is also true of 
the highest conception of humanitarian 
efforts. When it has become the daily 
habit of the soul, we shall do right with- 
out knowing it. Then will the powers of 
the earth and the human mind ally them- 
selves with the powers of God and nature 
to bring about that ''Kingdom on earth 
which is in Heaven.'' 

"Then happiness will be at its maxi- 
mum, and the soul-felt desires of millions 
of generations will be heard as prayers 
and answered as facts. Love is the high- 

143 



ESSAYS 

est manifestation of mental life. The 
mind through all its developmental ca- 
reer has been reaching toward it and long- 
ing for it. The elemental form of love ap- 
pears in every pleasure of every kind, but 
its highest manifestation is altruistic." 



144 



AN INTERPRETATION OF EMERSON'S 
"SPHINX" 



AN INTERPRETATION OF EMER- 
SON'S "SPHINX." 

The Poem. 

THE Sphinx is drowsy, 
Her wings are furled, 
Her ear is heavy, 
She broods on the world. — 
''Who'll tell me my secret 
The ages have kept ? 
I awaited the seer, 

While they slumbered and slept; — 

''The fate of the man-child; 
The meaning of man; 
Known fruit of the Unknown; 

Dsedahan plan; 
Out of sleeping a waking. 
Out of waking a sleep. 
Life death overtaking. 
Deep underneath deep. 
147 



ESSAYS 

''Erect as a sunbeam 

Upspringeth the palm; 
The elephant browses 

Undaunted and calm; 
In beautiful motion 

The thrush plies his wings ; 
Kind leaves of his covert! 

Your silence he sings. 

''The waves, unashamed, 

In difference sweet, 
Play glad with the breezes, 

Old playfellows meet. 
The journeying atoms. 

Primordial wholes, 
Firmly draw, firmly drive. 

By their animate poles. 

"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, 

Plant, quadruped, bird. 
By one music enchanted. 

One deity stirred, — 
Each the other adorning. 

Accompany still; 
Night veileth the morning, 

The vapor the hill. 

148 



ESSAYS 

''The babe by its mother 

Lies bathed in joy; 
GHde its hours uncounted, — 

The sun is its toy; 
Shines the peace of all being, 

Without cloud, in its eyes, 
And the sum of the world 

In soft miniature Hes. 

''But man crouches and blushes, 

Absconds and conceals ; 
He creepeth and peepeth. 

He palters and steals; 
Infirm, melancholy. 

Jealous glancing around. 
An oaf, an accomplice, 

He poisons the ground/' 

Out spoke the great mother. 

Beholding his fear ; — 
At the sound of her accents 

Cold shuddered the sphere; — 
"Who has drugged my boy's cup? 

Who has mixed my boy's bread? 
Who with sadness and madness 

Has turned my child's head?" 

149 



ESSAYS 

I heard a poet answer 

Aloud and cheerfully, 
''Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges 

Are pleasant songs to me. 
Deep love lieth under 

These pictures of time ; 
They fade in the light of 

Their meaning sublime. 

''The fiend that man harries 
Is love of the Best; 
Yawns the pit of the Dragon, 
Lit by rays from the Blest. 
The Lethe of Nature 

Can't trance him again, 
Whose soul sees the Perfect, 
Which his eyes seek in vain. 

"To insight profounder 
Man's spirit must dive; 
His eye-rolling orbit 

At no goal will arrive. 
The heavens that now draw him 

With sweetness untold, 
Once found, — for new heavens 
He spurneth the old. 

150 



ESSAYS 

'Tride ruined the angels, 

Their shame them restores; 
And the joy that is sweetest 

Lurks in stings of remorse. 
Have I a lover 

Who is noble and free, — 
I would he were nobler 

Than to love me. 

^'Eterne alternation 

Now follows, now flies; 
And under pain, pleasure, — 

Under pleasure, pain lies. 
Love works at the centre. 

Heart-heaving alway; 
Forth speed the strong pulses 

To the borders of day. 

^'DuU Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits: 

Thy sight is growing blear ; 
Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx, 

Her muddy eyes to clear V — 
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, — 

Said, ''Who taught thee me to name?'' 
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow. 

Of thine eye I am eyebeam. 



ESSAYS 

''Thou art the unanswered question; 

Could'st see thy proper eye, 
Always it asketh, asketh ; 

And each answer is a he. 
So take thy quest through nature, 

It through thousand natures ply ; 
Ask on, thou clothed eternity; 

Time is the false reply/' 

Up rose the merry Sphinx, 

And crouched no more in stone; 
She melted into purple cloud. 

She silvered in the moon ; 
She spired into a yellow flame ; 

She flowered in blossoms red ; 
She flowed into a foaming wave ; 

She stood Monadnoc's head. 

Through a thousand voices 
Spoke the universal dame : 
'Who telleth one of my meanings, 
Is master of all I am." 

The Interpretation. 

The negative side of man's spirit as 
represented by average humanity is dull, 



ESSAYS 

stupid and sleepy from ignorance. His 
''ear is heavy" and he ''broods" because he 
cannot comprehend the mighty secrets of 
the external and internal world. He waits 
through the slow creeping ages for the 
revelation yet to be made by the Seer and 
the Poet. These questionings. 

"The fate. of the man-child; 
The meaning of man;" 

have puzzled and kept the minds of the 
thoughtful in unrest, in all ages of the 
world ; and are, and ever will be, the deep- 
est of all questions. The commandment 
"Know thyself" is God implanted, and has 
raged in the souls of men always, with 
more or less of divine fervor, and is being 
answered with greater clearness to-day 
than ever before. Life with its manifold 
activities man realizes is the outgrowth of 
some unseen force, the result is apparent, 
but the causes, and that which lies still 
farther back, the primal cause, he cannot 
see. Yet, by some strange, irresistible 
force, he is ever impelled to seek after the 
"unknown." The workings of the world 
are so mysterious, so intricate, so laby- 

153 



ESSAYS 

rinthine, that to the ''drowsy'' passive ones 
it cannot but seem a ''DaedaHan plan/' not 
only in the material universe, but still 
more so in the marvelous complexity of 
the human mind. 

''Out of sleeping a waking, 
Out of waking a sleep." 

This is the wonderful resurrection psalm, 
sung through all nature and in the soul's 
immortality. Each death ushers in a new 
birth, the mysterious transformation and 
transfiguration, going on in all life, where 
"if we could watch with eyes all seeing, 
we should expect to watch those world- 
systems themselves coming and going, like 
the leaves upon our trees, like the human 
generations, systems evolving and dis- 
solving in endless cycles of cosmic repro- 
duction." Verily, 

"Life death overtaking; 
Deep underneath deep." 

Out of decaying nature wake the springs 
of budding life, and in the sleep of the 
body which we call death, the waking into 
immortal life. Even this sleep of the body 

154 



ESSAYS 

is only apparent, for when the spirit has 
fled, nature begins her work of resurrec- 
tion at once, forming new combinations 
of gases and chemical compounds, out of 
which new births will arise. 

In external nature, and in the lower 
forms of animal life, all is calm, peaceful 
and free. No unrest, no questioning of 
the why. The happy birds sing gaily, 
speaking for the voiceless, silent leaves, 
thus reciprocating their shelter and prais- 
ing their beauty. Here all is joy and glad- 
ness living out a perfect existence, obedi- 
ent to the laws which govern them, and 
all moving together harmoniously, the 
Supreme over all, and in all, and a beauti- 
ful interdependence, as 

^^By one music enchanted, 
One deity stirred.'' 

^^The journeying atoms, 
Primordial wholes. 
Firmly draw, firmly drive, 
By their animate poles.'' 

Here Is a recognition of nature's immut- 
able laws revealed by modern science, 

155 



ESSAYS 

where there is neither wavering nor vacil- 
lation. How articulate with power and 
meaning is the word ''firmly!" 

The new-born babe appears to us a di- 
rect revelation and gift from the Divine. 
Those calm, unfathomable depths in its 
eyes strongly suggest a past life — "The 
immortality that lies behind us/' But here 
is the potential man, here 

"The sum of the world 
In soft miniature lies.'' 

Nothing could exceed the beauty of this 
expression, and the possibility it fore- 
shadows of man's high destiny. 

Man, by his pettiness, selfishness and 
passions, grows weak and infirm. The 
world is not dismal, nor sad, nor melan- 
choly, if he fills it with purpose, and is 
gifted with wisdom and faith. It is not 
God, not nature, that has "poisoned the 
ground," but man's own acts, the result 
of his perverted will. 

The "great mother," speaking for all 
mothers, in that agonized cry which is 
wrung from the torn heart, when the eyes 
of her boy have lost "the peace of all 

156 



ESSAYS 

being/' and whose character has been 
destroyed by a Hfe o£ sin and folly, gives 
us in epitome the pathos of maternal love 
and care. But the poet, if he be a true 
poet, is seer and prophet, and can be 
cheerful, even joyous, because he sees 
that 

"Deep love lieth under'' 

all these dark and despairing circum- 
stances. He reaches out and beyond the 
present and the particular up to the uni- 
versal, and there reads in golden letters 

''The meaning sublime.'' 

But man is not content to sit idle, or drink 
of the waters of Lethe, because — 

''The fiend that man harries" 

is aspiration, which will never let him 
sleep. It goads and pricks him on, keep- 
ing him forever in search of the highest, 
the "best." The "pit of the Dragon," 
which symbolizes the negative side of 
man's nature, is ever open, yawning, 
ready to engulf the weak, faint-hearted, 
passive souls "Who by not doing, not by 

157 



ESSAYS 

doing, lost/' But even this dismal pit is 
illumined ''by rays from the Blest/' 
These rays were intended primarily to 
make the pit visible, but they will light 
the way for him who will rise to the task 
of searching, thinking and acting for 
himself. Man is given free-will, and the 
power to choose, and if he desire not to 
fall into ''the pit of the Dragon,'' let him 
become self-remedial, and a free soul, 
through renunciation and reconciliation. 
There is no rest in the finite for one 
whose soul is once filled with the ideal, 
the perfect. He may not be able to real- 
ize this ideal, it may not be perceptible to 
the senses, but he knows its verity, its 
truth. This is to him the supreme good. 
Man must look beyond the present and 
his environment, else he will be blind to 
what are the true and the beautiful. 

"To insight profounder 
Man's spirit must dive" 

if he would receive an answer to his aspi- 
rations. But having found the heaven 
of his desires he will not be contented to 
soar no more, but will press forward seek- 

158 



ESSAYS 

ing ''new heavens'' to explore. Thus the 
spirit of activity, which is the world- 
spirit, is kept alive and forever moving. 
Out of evil there will come good. Pride 
will cure pride, by bringing shame, which 
will restore. Sin will react upon the sin- 
ner, and work redemption. The dual na- 
ture of man makes all the fluctuations in 
human life, ''The eterne alternation.'' 
Pain is born of pleasure in excess, and 
pleasure of pain, in the light which brings 
wisdom and grace. Pain is the "blessed 
Angel," and brings "the peace that pass- 
eth understanding" upon her wings. But 
through all the conflicts, 

"Love works at the centre" 

and will bring about the final reconcili- 
ation. 

"Have I a lover 

Who is noble and free? — 
I would he were nobler 
Than to love me." 

Here the poet rises beyond the beatitude 
of "Love's young dream," beyond all 

159 



ESSAYS 

present finite joy, and points to a love 
centered in the ideal, the eternal. 

The ''dull Sphinx" mirrors man's own 
stupidity. Finitude blinds his eyes. She 
is indeed and in truth his ''spirit, yoke- 
fellow.'' Man here sees the reflex of him- 
self. He is the unanswerable question, the 
riddle of all time. If we would solve the 
problems of life, we must seek to learn 
the laws which govern life, because law 
is the most direct revelation from the Di- 
vine. Here the Poet has given us the key 
which unlocks the secrets of the universe. 
Man is clothed with immortality, there- 
fore, the finite, the present and the in- 
dividual will not give us the true answer, 
and is a "lie," and the present time, which 
is limited, must of necessity be a "false re- 
ply." We must pierce even into eternity, 
with the spirit's eye, for the solution of 
the deep and holy mystery of life. 

Why should the Sphinx be "merry"? 
Because she has at last caught a glimpse 
of her true self. Man is now revealed, 
has become self-conscious. He will 
"crouch" no more, but will rise to his full 
stature, the glorious heights of the recog- 

i6o 



ESSAYS 

nition of his infinitude and immortality. 
He has now found freedom through his 
''profounder'' insight. This is the su- 
preme beatitude. This is the joy that 
saints and martyrs have striven to ex- 
press, when yielding up all, even life, for 
truth's sake. This the poets have essayed 
to express, from the beginning of the 
world. This is the ecstasy, this the true 
elixir of life. 

The creative force, the ''universal 
dame," speaks through all life and moves 
as truly in the infusorial animacula as in 
the solar system, or the soul of man. 
When man recognizes this truth and his 
unity with God, then he is ''Master of all 
I am,'' and the "drowsy" Sphinx v/ill un- 
furl her wings, and never again will she 
"brood on the world." 

The poem could not have been written 
by one who was not in full sympathy with 
the scientific as well as the spiritual move- 
ment of our age. With a poet's fine ear 
he hears the deep questionings which are 
borne on every breeze, and with a poet's 
clear vision he sees the spiritual facts un- 
derlying all phenomena: "Prove them 

i6i 



ESSAYS 

facts? That they o'er-pass my power of 
proving, proves them such/' 

The poem is pitched in the highest key. 
It is marvelously concrete, considering its 
scope. Its phraseology is marked and pe- 
cuHar and abstruse until one has found the 
keynote, then it unfolds in wonderful per- 
fection and beauty. It mirrors the sub- 
jective and objective world. We feel the 
rhythmical movement of Cosmos in it. It 
grasps the macrocosm and microcosm, 
and we may, if we listen well, hear the 
harmony of the spheres in their eternal 
progress. To appreciate it, one must have 
an ear finely attuned to the world's har- 
monies and a mind kindled by imagina- 
tion. He must be able to grasp the totality 
of life and carry it in his soul, as one 
grand, illuminated picture; then the 
''Sphinx" will whisper her secret to him. 

The poem naturally divides itself into 
five parts. The first, limiting itself to the 
first two verses, gives us the superficial 
view of life, and must of necessity, from 
its superficiality, be pessimistic; we can- 
not catch even a glimpse of the finality. 
But this is only the genesis of the poem; 

162 



ESSAYS 

it will grow out of this gloom, as it de- 
velops. 

The second part reveals the marvelous 
harmony, beauty and gladness of the ma- 
terial world and of animal life. 

In the third part, in wonderful conden- 
sity is shown the negative, or ugly, side 
of man's nature. So cutting and strong 
is the description that one shrinks from it 
as from a blow. We feel the old Hebraic 
scorn of the flesh : verily, we are ''worms 
of the dust,'' groveling, and ''poisoning" 
the ground. But the symphony now arises 
in cheerfulness, steady, strong, assured. 
Under the dirges which the Sphinx sings, 
we hear soft strains of spirit-music of love 
and harmony, which are finally to reveal 
to us the meaning of this discord. Pri- 
marily, this discord lies deep in the nature 
of man, his aspiration striving against his 
limitations. This begets conflict, until fi- 
nally, 

"His soul sees the perfect. 
Which his eyes seek in vain." 

Now the symphony passes to the oratorio 
and becomes recitative, explanatory with 

163 



ESSAYS 

the adagio-con-gravita movement, giving 
us clear reasoning, and answering our per- 
sistent why. 

In the fourth movement, we are thrilled 
by a grand song of triumph in crescendo- 
al-fortissimo, announcing that ''Thou art 
the unanswered question/' Thou art the 
''clothed eternity;" Thou art the immor- 
tal one. Humanity here rises to the level 
of its source, and the idea of the Divine- 
human leads naturally and logically to the 
idea of immortality. This is the synthesis 
of evolution and of thought. 

In the fifth and final movement, the or- 
chestra bursts forth in a Giulivissimo song 
of free, joyous rapture, man finds his 
apotheosis, and is 

"Master of all I am.'' 



164 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURY 



WOMAN^S WORK IN THE NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURY. 

Part I. 
The General Outlook. 

WE hear on every hand the cry, 
this is the age of invention, of 
the purely practical, when sci- 
ence and mechanics are revolutionizing 
the methods of man's labor to wrest from 
the productive earth the comforts and ne- 
cessities of life with the least possible out- 
lay of vital force. Simultaneously we 
hear the cry, this is the age of material- 
ism, agnosticism, unrest, spiritual heresy 
and infidelity; the age of social upheav- 
als, of the shattering of old ideals, the 
destruction of old landmarks, old idols, 
and the disintegration of family life. This 
is an age when the state and the nation 
are as unstable as the individual. The 
monarch sleeps uneasily, fearing the as- 
sassin's knife. Nihilists and anarchists 

167 



ESSAYS 

with brain and bomb are striving to break 
down all institfitions, religious, social and 
political. But, side by side v/ith telegraph 
and railroad, has grown a broader idea of 
man's true relation to man; a larger 
knowledge of the rich resources of the 
world, a consciousness of wonderful 
achievements in art, science and literature, 
and a spirit of noble emulation, which 
promises splendid results in the future. 
Keeping pace with the stealthy move- 
ments of the social revolutionists has been 
a steady vein of growth and thought look- 
ing to a higher, purer state of well being, 
not only for the few, but for the great 
mass of mankind. If we read of numer- 
ous divorces, with all the slime and filth 
there revealed, indicating the disintegra- 
tion of family life, do we remember that 
upon the opposite page may be written 
the lives of men and women, whose fidel- 
ity to all the sacred relations of life are 
unparalleled in history or song. Evil ap- 
palls a community and crime is published 
broadcast, but virtue, being more normal, 
seldom awakens comment. 

With the current of doubt and unbelief 
i68 



ESSAYS 

which threatens to inundate this fair age 
Hke the waters of the Nile over the Egyp- 
tian sands, runs another current, strong, 
pure and crystal-clear, acknowledging in- 
finite wisdom and recognizing the sun-like 
truths of justice, mercy and freedom. In 
no age of the world have the ideals of 
men and women attained to such sublime 
heights of personal purity and personal re- 
sponsibility. Never before have men real- 
ized the divine possibilities inherent in 
human nature, and never before have 
these ideals and these possibilities been 
more keenly felt, more ardently loved and 
more earnestly sought after. Man is 
learning to analyze, but not wholly to 
destroy, to build anew out of the old. Sci- 
ence is not all analysis, nor art all synthe- 
sis, for science builds up as wxll as tears 
down, and art discriminates, and dissects, 
and gives us in the higher forms only con- 
crete truths. 

There is a subject which lies at the cen- 
ter of life and well being, which on the 
one hand is related to all that life means 
of peace and holiness, and, on the other 
hand, is the source of degradation, sin and 

169 



ESSAYS 

discord. But neither school of scientists 
has given exhaustive attention to it; 
Historians only touch upon it, Philoso- 
phers merely glance at it, Poets have sung 
only of its sunny side, and Reformers 
have generally ''made the darkness more 
visible/' I mean the social and domestic 
life of men and women. If my pen could 
adequately portray this antithesis, could 
paint the glory of the one and the horrors 
of the other, no further argument would 
be necessary to arouse mankind to give to 
this subject that close study which is now 
being given to kindred subjects. 

In all ages of the world men and w^omen 
have ''heard the voice of God" calling 
them to a consecration of their powers to 
the services of mankind. To-day the word 
is spoken emphatically to woman. The 
perfect type of domestic felicity can 
scarcely be found, yet does not each un- 
tainted soul hold in its innermost recess a 
sacred ideal of this relation? The pos- 
session of this ideal is one proof of its 
possible fulfillment. If we can build up a 
social structure so that the whole fabric 
stands complete in its unity and perfec- 

170 



ESSAYS 

tion, and prove its logical and spiritual 
reasons for being, we shall give to the 
world an ideal which shall be to the soul 
of man as lasting an inspiration as the 
Athenian Parthenon has been to the high- 
est art feeling for centuries. 

Our subject lies at the root of civiliza- 
tion, and to evolutional development and 
immutable law, in so far as it has yet been 
revealed to man, we must look for light 
in the solution of our problem: First: 
What are the laws governing mind and 
body? Second: To what extent does one 
modify and control the other? Third: 
When conflict arises, which is inevitable 
from the imperfection of all finite rela- 
tions, shall expediency and emotion de- 
cide, or abstract principle? Fourth: To 
what extent should the fact of parentage 
influence us in decisions touching this 
question? Fifth : What are the laws gov- 
erning social development ? Sixth : What 
are the laws governing individual develop- 
ment? Seventh: What is the relation of 
the individual to others, or the general 
good? Eighth: Woman's influence and 
her especial duty to-day ? 

171 



ESSAYS 

First. The law of soul and body. 
Man's threefold nature, instead of an- 
tagonizing, should be one expression of 
a perfect whole. Man cannot live in his 
animal state alone, neither can he live 
alone in the intellectual; neither in the 
spiritual. The animality of the savage 
represents the first; the cold devotee of 
learning the second, and the pale, unnatu- 
ral ascetic the third. Neither of these 
gives us the type of a perfect rounded 
manhood. This triune nature, and how 
to harmonize and unify it, and thereby 
make man free, has puzzled even the 
wise. No faculty is given us for neglect, 
but for use and beauty. History bears 
out the truth of this, for when develop- 
ment takes on a purely one-sided form, 
nature revenges herself by sweeping over 
to the opposite side, as is illustrated by the 
violent recalcitration from corruption and 
folly, to cruel austerity and severity. 
From unquestioning obedience to author- 
ity and superstition to heresy and fanatic- 
ism. This brings about, approximately, 
an equilibrium and keeps up that ponder- 
ous movement which we call history. 

172 



ESSAYS 

Second. When conflict arises, principle 
and not expediency and feeling must ever 
determine. Third. The fact of parent- 
age is, or should be, an eternal bond. The 
living soul evolved from out the creative 
forces in the universe, holding those two 
wills responsible for its being, is the weav- 
ing of a chain whose growing links 
stretch far into eternity. The soul created 
to-day creates in the fulness of time other 
souls, who perpetuate good or evil. 
Fourth. In the early development of 
races the animal propensities predominate, 
for the perpetuation of the race and give 
us titanic types of men and women. Thus 
the gluttonous, drinking early Saxon and 
Norman has had as necessary place in the 
world as the Hindoo ascetic. Each epoch 
stands for some truth which remains a 
guiding principle for decades or centuries, 
until a new movement arises, and all 
things are changed. Thus each period be- 
comes world-historic. It is the chief work 
of mankind from age to age to seek out, 
keep alive and perpetuate these truths. 
This is God's work in and through man. 
At some periods the tide of civilization 

^7Z 



ESSAYS 

reaches higher and makes a larger, 
grander sweep than at others, and in such 
proportion will that influence be felt 
for a longer or shorter period of time. 
How deep and long is the Hebraic stream. 
How full of beauty and perfection the 
Greek. How broad, prophetic and spirit- 
freeing the Christian. All ethics must be 
judged by the light of the age in which 
such ethics were the highest conception of 
human thought and action, for only so can 
we form a just estimate of the value of any 
particular time. In this way only can we 
get a proper perspective by which to form 
our opinion of the present, as well as the 
past. 

Sixth. On the laws governing individ- 
ual development, John Stewart Mill says: 
'*No one can be a great thinker who does 
not recognize that as a thinker it is his 
first duty to follow his intellect to what- 
ever conclusion it may lead,'' and again, 
''In proportion to the development of his 
individuality, each person is more valuable 
to himself and is therefore more valuable 
to others. There is a greater fullness of 
life about his own existence, and where 

174 



ESSAYS 

there is more life in the units there is more 
Hfe in the mass which is composed of 
them/' The keynote of all reform is the 
perfection of individual character. Each 
human being must in and of himself, and 
out of such conditions and environments 
as may surround him, and out of such ma- 
terial as hourly presents itself, work out 
the problems which life brings to him. 
This is the source of all character mould- 
ing. Goethe says, 'Xet a man learn, we 
say, to figure himself without permanent 
relation; let him seek consistency and se- 
quences not in circumstances, but in him- 
self; there will he find it; there let him 
cherish and nourish it.'' A recent writer 
says, ''Freedom for development and ap- 
plication of pure moral impulse is now the 
hunger of humanity; mutual coercion and 
suppression of this impulse is its crime." 
When conflict arises between the individ- 
ual and the rights of others, ''The less 
must be sacrificed to the greater," the in- 
dividual to the state, the state to the na- 
tion. Socrates gave his life to the state, 
to which he owed allegiance, because he 
had disregarded the laws of the state; he 

175 



ESSAYS 

could pay this deference to its require- 
ments, because it did no injury to his con- 
science. But his opinion and reason he 
would not yield; he was true to the voice 
of God in his own soul. In the beautiful 
story of Agamemnon's daughter, Ephi- 
genia, this truth is given us in mytholog- 
ical guise, and in reading mythology we 
must remember that 'Tagan self-assertion 
is one of the elements of human worth, as 
well as Christian self-denial.'' There is 
no real antagonism between the right to 
individual development and the duty to 
mankind. Out of the perfection of the 
individual will grow the perfection of the 
race; in proportion to the perfection of 
the units will be the perfection of the 
whole. 

PART 11. 

Eor what shall woman stand in this 
civilization? What shall she do to assist 
in solving the great social problems of 
the day? As we glance backward over 
the mighty past, and hopefully toward the 
future, may we not take a comprehensive 
view and evolve from out the truths of 

176 



ESSAYS 

religion, mythology, history, science and 
social and political economy a code of 
ethics that shall be as a beacon light to the 
coming generation ? 

The social organization is composed of 
two separate individualities, man and 
woman. For the harmonious development 
of the whole race each should be cultivated 
to the fullest extent of their capabilities, 
yet each may grow after the manner of 
its needs and in no way interfere with the 
free, healthful growth of the other. To 
make the perfect tree, the trunk follows 
the law of its nature, the leaves know 
their own needs and the roots reaching 
down into the cool, damp ground find 
there what they require for sustenance. 
Each member follows the law of its own 
being, yet all grow together to form the 
perfect whole. One imperfect member 
destroys the beauty and symmetry of the 
tree. Thus it is in the social body; free 
play must be allowed to all the faculties 
of_ the two members, and freedom to do 
this carries with it an immense responsi- 
bility, which must be considered. 

In all the higher forms of civilization 
177 



ESSAYS 

woman has been recognized, to some ex- 
tent, as the equal of man. ''Far back in 
the days of the Vedas of India, and many 
centuries later, when the great Buddhist 
hopes were built, there we find from the 
poetry of the former and the bas-reliefs 
of the latter women mixed freely and un- 
veiled at feasts and sacrifices, and the two 
great Sanscrit epics, the Manhabahharata 
and the Ramayana, with some of the later 
tragedies, turn on chivalrous stories 
wherein women played noble parts and 
were nobly beloved/' The Homeric age 
gives us such noble examples of woman- 
hood as Penelope and Andromache. The 
heroic age of woman among the Britons 
was the age to which Boadicea belonged. 
So in the Periclean age exceptional wom- 
en discussed grave questions with wise and 
great men. Sophocles and Euripides wri- 
ting in classic Athens give us such glori- 
ous types of womanhood as Alcestis and 
Antigone. The heroism of the Roman 
matron is a matter of history. Aggrip- 
pina, wife of Germanicus, lives beside her 
husband, and Cloelia's brave efifort for 
home and freedom reads like a tale from 

178 



ESSAYS 

the Arabian Nights. The Jews had their 
Miriam and Deborah, and a woman, Hul- 
da, was intrusted with the key to the 
''Holy of Hohes." Italy gives us such 
matchless women as Vittoria Colonna and 
Margaret of Navara. Our own time fur- 
nishes numberless instances of personal 
valor, strength, purity and achievement. 
So all down through the stream of history, 
individual women have risen who quick- 
ened the development and helped to ripen 
and perpetuate the truth for which their 
especial epochs stand. But these are ex- 
ceptional cases. The feeling of the great 
mass of mankind is doubtless more nearly 
voiced by Dean Swift, who, when giving 
an account of a disaster, summarized it by 
saying: ''Two thousand souls lost and 
several women and children.'' ^Our com- 
placency and pride in our Nineteenth Cen- 
tury civilization is shocked when we read 
in the papers such items as this : "There 
are in India four hundred thousand wid- 
ows under eighteen years of age. One- 
fifth of these are under nine years of age. 
The former barbarous custom of burning 
these poor girl-widows has been abolished. 

179 



ESSAYS 

But the inhuman and unnatural custom of 
perpetual widowhood still holds sway/' 
Bound in the unyielding chains of ignor- 
ance are those bodies and souls. Again 
we see the trail of superstition in the old 
idea that ''The Priest shall make atone- 
ment for you/' but you as an individual 
may not enter the ''Holy of Holies." Was 
not the cry of the Israelites in the Psalm, 
"My soul thirsteth for God, when shall I 
come and appear before the face of God/' 
a cry of the heart to reach forth and clasp 
the hand of the eternal, at any time or 
place, when the soul's needs were felt most 
keenly. Woman must learn to think and 
act for herself, and lean on none save 
God only. It is not so much what we be- 
lieve as what we do. To be, and not to 
seem to be, is the keynote to all true char- 
acter growth. Let the severity which has 
characterized woman's obedience to au- 
thority in the past stand as a type of the 
severity with which, as a rational human 
being, she will hold herself responsible for 
all inward thought or outward act. The 
church has ever employed woman's fine 
emotions to keep alive her altar fires. Her 

1 80 



ESSAYS 

devotional nature, her keen mental wants, 
and the finer passions of the heart have 
heretofore found in religious observances 
a large field of activity. But to-day wom- 
en are called to a higher consecration of 
their powers than embroidering altar 
cloths and priestly robes. Yet let us never 
forget what the Church has done for the 
conservation of art and literature, and 
that all this has meant and still means 
spiritual and mental growth. 

The true conception of woman's work 
in the world, her duties, privileges and re- 
sponsibilities, is yet to be conceived in the 
brain of some seer, to be given to the 
world by some noble teacher, and finally 
to be lived and proved by generations, be- 
fore it can become a vitalizing, regenerat- 
ing power. While a few minds have rec- 
ognized this truth, and a few women have 
distinguished themselves sufficiently to 
keep the truth alive, this is only the his- 
torical few, the ''Saving Remnant.'' The 
most of womankind do not fully realize 
their powers or responsibilities. But 
whenever the ideals, the leading minds of 
a nation are lofty, the masses will strive 

i8i 



ESSAYS 

toward these ideals. If a few women, 
rarely gifted, rarely endowed with moral 
courage, and a philanthropic spirit, will 
point the way, time will bring out the final 
redemption. Woman must learn that any 
violation of her nature, mental, moral or 
physical, is followed by retribution, for 
law makes no sentimental discrimination 
in favor of her sex. Law does not even 
take account of motives, be that motive 
ever so high or holy. 

It is unnecessary to discuss the equality 
or inequality of men and women. John 
Stewart Mill says: ''When Christ wrought 
out for woman not a social identity, but a 
social equality, not a rivalry with the func- 
tions of men, but an elevation of her own 
functions, as high as his, it made the world 
and human life in this respect also a true 
image of God." It is often said with bi- 
ting sarcasm that women have never writ- 
ten great histories, never written a great 
epic poem, never accomplished a great 
work of art, never discovered anything 
new in science, never invented machinery, 
never proved themselves astute or gifted 
in statesmanship. All these accusations 

182 



ESSAYS 

are but partly true and have many excep- 
tions. But let us remember they were the 
mothers of those accredited with all these 
great achievements. We cannot say that 
woman will do her best work in the direc- 
tion of science, art or literature ; time, the 
revealer of all truth, will demonstrate this 
upon the future pages of history. But the 
same causes which have operated against 
woman's advancement or achievement in 
the past do not exist to-day. There are 
few fields of activity wherein she may not 
spread her wings and soar as high as her 
capacity will admit. There are remaining 
few causes for complaint. She has only 
to prove her fitness and worthiness to re- 
ceive in nearly all departments of life full 
recognition and appreciation. The few 
barriers which now restrict her activities 
will doubtless soon be removed. But we 
must be patient as well as persistent, for 
nature has given us no universal panacea 
warranted to cure quickly or suddenly our 
ills, whether they be physical or social. 
Let woman use her superior advantage, 
her more carefully trained emotions, her 
better disciplined mind, to bear upon those 

183 



ESSAYS 

problems, which by their nature He nearer 
to her than to man. Let her give long, 
patient thought to the search after those 
laws which govern the spiritual, social and 
domestic world. Here is the center of her 
work, fixed by the immutable laws of her 
being. Whatever of light and blessing it 
is given her to shed upon the world, its 
purest rays must radiate from this central 
sun. This is in the most direct line of her 
life, and she cannot escape the responsi- 
bilities if she would. The very generic 
difference from man may be a divinely ap- 
pointed means by which she may arrive 
at a true conception of this most complex 
question. This is the ''eternal womanly" 
which is to ''draw us onward.'' To these 
problems let her give her best endeavors, 
her utmost efforts and the consecration of 
a life, if necessary. Mothers may emulate 
the historic and mj^thic sacrifices of the 
Greek and Roman fathers, not as Ephi- 
genia or Virginia; but daughters may be 
taught to sacrifice enervating luxury, ease 
or even comfort, rather than sell them- 
selves for pleasure, place or power. Wom- 
en should not shrink from the cares of 

184 



ESSAYS 

maternity, but bring a greater consecra- 
tion to it. All reform is effective in pro- 
portion to the amount of enthusiasm, love 
and consecration we take to it. All the 
knowledge, refinement, education, wis- 
dom and grace will find a fitting niche in 
the receptive mind of the young. If 
mothers seek to be companions to their 
children, then each day will be a beautiful 
idyl, where wit, wisdom, beauty and love 
shall make the poem complete. In this 
way only can perfect unity exist between 
parent and child. Woman must stand first 
and last, striving always to retain under 
all circumstances her perfect equipoise, 
and ceaselessly labor for a perfect indi- 
viduality, strong yet flexible. 

She must stand for absolute sincerity, 
absolute purity, absolute integrity; recog- 
nizing her responsibility and rising to a 
consciousness of the sacredness and beauty 
of her functions, her duties, which are as 
limitless as the universe and as vast as 
humanity. She must see the trend of 
events and have some voice in shaping 
their course. The gospel of the divinity 
in human nature comes with a new revela- 

185 



ESSAYS 

tion, a new hope and a new aim. How 
could woman work, with care, and joy, 
when she beHeved herself to be without a 
soul? Women should stand as one for 
absolute fidelity to the ideal marriage, 
never debasing it for any reason what- 
soever, and never assuming the relation 
for any reason excepting the highest, 
which is love. No more should we seek 
marriage, for any other reason than the 
highest, than v/e should seek God for any 
but the highest motive, which is love. To 
seek God for fear, for hope of gain or re- 
ward, is to the enlightened conscience blas- 
phemous. Equally so should it be to seek 
marriage, which is the highest symbol of 
our unity with the Creator, and was often 
so used by the Nazarene teacher. Abso- 
lute personal purity has never attained 
universality, though the ideal has been 
accepted and realized in many individual 
lives, thus keeping alive the spark which 
shall kindle to purify the whole human 
family. A Utopian dream, perhaps, but 
not impossible. The Vestal virgins of 
Rome furnished an example of genera- 
tions of chaste women, for it is recorded 

i86 



ESSAYS 

that in one thousand years only eighteen 
cases o£ unchastity occurred. This can be 
made possible only by the slow process of 
a proper education of the young, in the 
principle underlying their nature, empha- 
sized in the family and insisted upon by 
the state. The time is full ripe for noble 
work to be done. A glance at the family 
life in our large cities, the abnormal life 
of most of our young women, and the cor- 
rupt lives of young men, show a tendency 
to drift into a vortex of immorality. 
Much of this tendency is due to the change 
and unrest of the age, and the great pros- 
perity and rapid growth of a new country, 
two causes most fruitful of evil, unless a 
counter current shall set in which will 
purify the stream and modify its course. 
Eventually, in the pendulous movement of 
the world's growth, the needle of the com- 
pass will point to the marriage of one 
man with one woman, or a pure single life. 
The dawn of this coming era began far 
back in the ages, antedating Christianity, 
where the Hindoo poet, with divine in- 
sight, speaks from the voice of the In- 
dian Maiden, Savitri, these beautiful 

187 



ESSAYS 

words, when asked to choose a lover the 
second time : ''Once falls a heritage, once 
a maiden yields her maidenhood, once doth 
a father say choose, I abide thy choice. 
These three things done are done forever. 
Be my prince to live a year, or many 
years ; be he as great as Norada hath said, 
or less than this, once I have chosen him, 
I choose not twice." Let this truth, hav- 
ing traveled down the centuries, become 
crystalized in the most gracious age. Let 
the dawn brighten into day, and in the 
splendor of this principle the high thought 
of the Oriental poet shall clasp hands with 
the best modern thought, forming a circle 
which sooner or later will embrace the 
whole world. 

But we must not forget that much of 
the greatest of the world's work has been 
done in solitude and celibacy, and that 
character can be, and is, developed into 
rounded perfection outside of this rela- 
tion. Here the law of conservation of 
force applies, as elsewhere. This con- 
verging of many rays of light in this cen- 
tury promises a solution to many vexed 
questions. First, because we are ''Heirs 

1 88 



ESSAYS 

of all the Ages," and are beginning to 
learn how best to use our inheritance ; and, 
second, because we are living under the 
noon-day sun of a free, ripening civiliza- 
tion, whose most penetrating ray touched 
the world eighteen hundred years ago, and 
whose refulgent beams shine upon us with 
reflected glory as we move on from the 
past to the future. 

We find that for a comprehensive un- 
derstanding of woman's work in the Nine- 
teenth Century it is necessary : First, that 
she should be thoroughly acquainted with 
the atmosphere and movements of the age 
in which she lives ; also the relation of the 
past to the present, and its true value, as 
giving that large perspective by which 
alone we can adequately measure the needs 
and importance of her work to-day. Sec- 
ond, her right to individual culture and 
freedom to follow out the highest convic- 
tions of reason, subject only to another 
law, equally sacred, which respects the 
rights of others to do the same. Third, 
her exact relation to society, wherein the 
individual should, or should not, be sac- 
rificed to the general good. Fourth, the 
189 



ESSAYS 

fact of parentage involves the whole char- 
acter, and is the cause of the deepest 
tragedies of life, and calls loudly for a 
more serious consideration and readjust- 
ment of laws, social and legal. Fifth, 
when conflict arises between soul and 
body, or reason and feeling, reason must 
decide, for feeling is only transitory, while 
reason is abiding and gives strength and 
self-determination. Sixth, woman's work 
is largely determined by immutable law, 
and her labors are inside of this law, and 
not outside of it; the field is as boundless 
as space, and as infinite as the soul; she 
is especially called upon to-day to conse- 
crate anew her powers to the elevation of 
mankind by making vital the principles of 
purity, justice, freedom and equality. 



igq 



THRENODY 



THRENODY. 

THE poet is above all others the man 
of spirit, the medium through 
which the divine will and law is 
revealed to us. We hear much of Emer- 
son, the philosopher — rarely of Emerson, 
the poet. Yet I would give the Concord 
Seer a place among the laurel-crowned. 

By prose and poetry Emerson has es- 
sayed to answer the yearnings for evi- 
dence of things not seen, by a glorious 
faith and sublime assurance of the har- 
mony of the Universe. This is the legacy 
he has bequeathed to us, a legacy large, 
bountiful, beneficent. In Emerson's Thre- 
nody we feel that the poet has scaled the 
heights of joy, drunk deep of the cup of 
sorrow, soared above the height of des- 
pair, into the clear white light of spiritual 
insight. This poem represents an intelli- 
gent, open-eyed, conscious acquiescence in 
the eternal order of the World; — not a 
blind ''submission'' to the will of merciless 
Jehovah. 

193 



ESSAYS 

The poem may be divided into four 
parts. The first one hundred and fifty or 
two hundred Hnes give us the agony of the 
first shock of the bereaved heart; the 
mourn for the beloved. 'Xost, Lost/' is 
the refrain. In the first wild pang of 
grief, nature's bright joyousness seems a 
mockery. The south wind brings life, sun- 
shine and desire ; but our loved one nature 
cannot restore. In the first black hours 
how we miss the voice whose ''silver war- 
ble" ''outvalued every pulsing sound/' for 
whom all beauty, all nature might well 
exist; because he, the boy soul, is more 
precious than all, he is the perfect flower 
of nature. The creative forces still con- 
tinue; "the trees repair their boughs," but 
the form we love may not again be re-in- 
carnated. The wail he has "disappeared," 
nature's "Deep eye" "cannot find him," the 
soul cannot be re-clothed at our will or in- 
sistence. What then is left to us ? Where 
find restitution for this grievous loss ? Has 
our philosopher nothing to ofifer? Noth- 
ing to assuage the world, the severest na- 
ture inflicts, when she robs us of our un- 
tainted youth? Our Seer says: — "My 

194 



ESSAYS 

hopes pursue, they cannot bind him." 
Whither pursue? To future Hfe, to fu- 
ture joy? But the human heart returns 
again and again to the lament. Nature 
taunts our pain by the return of ''young 
pines" and building birches, ''but finds not 
the budding man." Then comes the cry of 
the intellect as well as of the heart, 
"whither now my truant wise and sweet?" 
And quickly follows the self-accusing 
question, how have I forfeited the right 
"thy steps to watch?" Then the question 
of the hungry, jealous heart, "hast thou 
forgot me in a new delight?" Ah! This 
were indeed bitter pain, to be "so soon for- 
got?" The heart returns to memory for 
comfort, recalls those scenes which had 
gladdened the heart in the happy days 
gone by, "When every morn my bosom 
glowed to watch the convoy on the road," 
and yet again the lament, "The brook into 
the stream runs on, but the deep-eyed boy 
is gone." 

In the next forty lines we hear the wail 
of the broken heart. Who has not felt the 
"needless glow" of all life and sunshine 
during the first hours of bereavement? 

195 



ESSAYS 

We ask again and again 'Why should 
every chick of every bird and weed and 
rock-moss be preferred." Why take this 
priceless blossom; ''For flattering planets 
seemed to say, 'This child should ills of 
ages stay/ '' 

The writer touches every circle of sor- 
row, every excuse which the aching soul 
of man makes to itself for its indulgence 
in grief. The high, the wonderful, the 
rare, is entered as a special plea why death 
should not lay his cruel hand upon this 
fairest bloom. But already we catch a 
glimpse of that "Good'' which may be 
gathered from these pains. 

''The eager Fate which carried three 
Took the largest part of me. 
For this losing is true dying ; 
This is lordly man's down lying.'^ 

The loosening of earth ties, the yielding of 
selfish will, and desire, to the order of the 
universe : 

"This his slow but sure declining. 
Star by star his world resigning.'^ 
196 



ESSAYS 

Still the struggle goes on, and he asks 
— nay, even censures. Nature, when he 
cries : 

''O Truth and Nature's costly lie, 
O trusted, broken prophesy, 

richest fortune, sourly crossed. 

Born for the future, to the future lost/' 

But again the deeper insight speaks 
"weepest thou?'' ''Worthier cause for 
passion wild,'' ''To be alone wilt thou be- 
gin when worlds of lovers hem thee in.'' 

We are reminded that there are other 
loves and lovers, to whom we owe allegi- 
ance, that this tie does not incompass the 
whole Universe of Love : 

^'I gave thee sight, — where is it now? 

1 taught thy heart beyond the reach 
Of ritual, Bible or of speech. 

Taught thee each private sign to raise, 
Lit by the super-solar blaze." 

By this suffering the soul learns more 
of life's richest truths than may be learned 
in days of joy. It is a mine of wealth 
and revelation. We learn through this 

197 



ESSAYS 

gift of human love more than may be 
taught by all books, all Bibles. It has 
opened up new worlds which we see 
through the eyes of the beloved. Our gain 
is far greater than the loss, for the blessed 
loan of love, the loss is for the present, the 
temporary only; the gain for all time. 
The gain is to know that 

^' 'Tis not within the force of Fate 
The fate conjoining to separate." 

This is faith, based upon the rock of 
nature's undeviating laws, the immortality 
of all things. This love teaches us ''past 
utterance and past belief, and past the 
blasphemy of grief, the mysteries of Na- 
ture's heart.'' Nothing stronger has ever 
been written against useless grief, the 
waste of tears. 

''And though no Muse can these impart, 
Throb thine with nature's throbbing 

breast. 
And all is clear, from East to West." 

No Muse can give us truth with the 
directness with which it comes to us from 
the "throbbing breast" of human love; if 

198 



ESSAYS 

wisely comprehended, it gives us the key 
to the highest. Through the eye of inno- 
cence, purity, we learn to know all that is 
sweetest and best in life. Reproof follows 
reproof in rapid order, ringing stronger, 
louder, clearer as the mind gradually per- 
ceives light breaking through the dark- 
ness. And yet so tenderly with all, kind 
nature says, ''I come to thee as to a 
friend,'' not with ''tutor's,'' but a ''joyful 
eye," the eye of love. For our gain and 
growth we may enjoy "the richest flower- 
ing of all art," the divine incarnated in the 
human form : Through this love and this 
loss we may know "the riches of sweet 
Mary's son," and the riches of His sor- 
row and the world's sorrow, and the 
world's joy. But life must go on, in spite 
of all changes in our small personal at- 
mosphere : "hig-h omens ask diviner guess" 
^^And know my higher gifts unbind the 
zone that girds the incarnate mind." 

The higher gifts. What are they? 
Where are they? They are the glimpses 
of truth poured into the mind through the 
meeting of the "Incarnate mind," through 
which alone the infinite is revealed to the 

199 



ESSAYS 

finite. Here is the superlative note, the 
highest moment portrayed by poets and 
philosophers. The higher gifts, per- 
ceived through life's joy and sorrow, re- 
lease the soul from the close-clinging ten- 
acity to this life and unbind the crust that 
wraps the soul in earthliness and sets it 
free. 

'When the scanty shores are full 

With thought's perilous, whirling pool, 

When frail nature can no more 
Then the spirit strikes the hour. 

My servant, death, with solving rite 
Pours finite into infinite.'' 

Death is thus beautifully clothed in 
thought and word. This is the incarna- 
tion of faith and trust. Death is God's 
''servant" and a ''solving rite," beautiful 
as the bursting chrysalis into the butterfly. 
Then arises the question : Would you have 
it otherwise? "Wilt thou freeze Love's 
tidal flow?" Wilt thou with thy puny 
knowledge question the All-wise? Wilt 
thou interrogate the "unreplying fate" 
that has never yet made answer to these 
agonized questions ? But we have the ac- 

200 



ESSAYS 

cumulated and accumulating race history 
to answer us, and the consensus of the 
billions and trillions of hopes and loves 
and faiths; say in the words of the poet 
Seer: 

''What is excellent, as God lives, is perma- 
nent. 
Hearts are dust, hearts loves remain, 
Heart's love will meet thee again/' 

Lift your soul to the level of the infinite 
soul, then all is clearly love and wisdom. 
The future is not a heaven of ''adamant 
and gold'' not ''stark and cold," "but a 
nest of bending reeds, aflowering grass 
and scented weeds." The soul yields to 
love's decree as bends the reed to the 
breeze that nourishes and strengthens it. 
All individual sorrow is merged in the 
universal ; a change of one chord into that 
of another, a higher. True, this faith is 
"built of tears and sacred flames," "and 
virtue reaching to its aims," "built of fur- 
therance and pursuing," ''not of spent 
deeds, but of doing." 

Activity is ever the command of nature, 
stagnation, inertia, is as abhorrent, as a 

201 



ESSAYS 

vacuum ; only by pursuing some high ob- 
ject in life shall the spirit be renewed, not 
lingering over ''spent deeds'' or recount- 
ing good already accomplished, but ever 
pressing onward, forward, uoward, to new 
achievements : 

''Silent rushes the swift Lord 
Through ruined systems still restored. 

Broad sowing, bleak and void to bless 
Plants with worlds the wilderness." 

The infinite spirit moves over and al- 
ways through all systems, ruined or de- 
caying in their form. From that which 
seems "bleak" and "void" the creative 
force "plants worlds" of beauty in this 
wilderness of apparent decay and ruin, 
and "watered with tears of ancient sor- 
row," "apples of Eden, ripe to-morrow." 

"House and tenement go to ground," 
"Lost in God, in God-head found." 

Thus the conditioned, transient is found 
in the permanent, the unconditioned, the 
universal. 



202 



IMPRACTICABILITY 



IMPRACTIBILITY. 

THERE is no word more persist- 
ently and constantly misused and 
misapplied than the word prac- 
tical. It is an especial favorite with the 
narrow-minded and ignorant. An ac- 
quaintance said recently, speaking of one 
of our greatest modern philosophers, "He 
has a great mind, but is so very imprac- 
tical.'' The fine scorn and air of superior- 
ity with which this was said was proof of 
the pitying contempt in which she held 
this seer and prophet. It also measured 
her appreciation of the eternal verities; 
she scorned all theories, all isms, and saw 
no deeper than to give the needy their 
daily bread. Food for the spirit she did 
not count among the necessaries of life. 
Yet the history of man's spiritual life 
shows us that the hunger for truth, the 
passion for righteousness, the yearning 

205 



•ESSAYS 

of the soul for God and Immortality, will 
sacrifice all material things, even life it- 
self, to these wants. Novalis says, ''Phi- 
losophy can bake no bread; but she can 
procure for us God, freedom an^ ^'mmor- 
tality." 

The more civilized man is, the more dif- 
ferentiated, individualized he is. This dif- 
ferentiation seeks expression and sepa- 
rates itself from the mass. He does not 
let the masses absorb him, he absorbs the 
masses. Therefore the one man is worth 
a thousand other men; one Shakespeare, 
one Emerson — there is no equivalent to 
these, in numbers. The man of thought 
cannot live a gregarious life, he seeks com- 
panion with the highest only. We cannot 
live with the stars if we keep our eyes 
fixed on the ground. The man of thought 
cannot be absorbed by surrounding cir- 
cumstances and conditions, but will ab- 
sorb them. He takes these up, digests 
them, retaining what is valuable and cast- 
ing away the husk; yet many live on the 
husks alone and think they have lived! 
There is no such thing in Nature, or man, 
as absolute identity. Nature abhors iden- 
206 



ESSAYS 

tity as she abhors a vacuum. This gives 
us the splendid diversity in human char- 
acter, and makes its study forever the 
deepest joy and the deepest pain of man- 
kind. 



207 



QUESTIONING 



QUESTIONING. 

WHAT if imagination's play 
Assumes thoughts truer, clearer 
way, 
And cheats our soul with fancy's dream, 
With hopes that are not, only seem? — 

If Plato's philosophic scheme 
And Jesus's teaching by the stream 
Were but fine cerebral fires. 
Dying when man expires? 

What if the martyrs' faith and hope 
Were only passions broader scope. 
To realize the general plan 
And bridge the space 'twixt God and 
Man?— 

And all the loves of human hearts 
Not perfect wholes, but only parts, 
Of the great universal whole. 
And lost the individual soul ? 

211 



ESSAYS 

Is song of bird or tint of flower, 
Beauty to please a passing hour, 
And not to mould our souls to know 
Love, above, around, below? 

Only nature's sensuous jest. 

All the sunsets in the west? 

In their colors' vieing glow 

Is there nothing we may know? — 

Is there never voice of one 
Who bids us look beyond the sun, 
To Him on whom men ever cry, 
When the hour of travail's nigh? 

The worshipper of holy fires 

To the same lofty heights aspires, 

As we, whose souls burn clear and strong. 

To strengthen right, to weaken wrong. 

Is lost this vast resistless power, 
The soldier's calm, the prophet's dower. 
Which grows and grows from age to age. 
Writ in History's crimsoned page? 

From earliest dawn of man's estate 
To the last soul who whispers, ''Wait,'^ 
We see through faith the best word spoken 
Is love, not power, but love unbroken. 

212 



ESSAYS 

This word must pass from tongue to 

tongue, 
Its truth throughout the world be rung, 
Revealed through Science's open gate, 
And souls divinely conquering fate. 

THE END. 



213 



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